The long take

later on there are two crucial scenes one with billy and lillian gish and one with gloria cristillo and lillian gish and they're all done single take beginning to end so lawton trusted his younger performers as much as the old veteran

15:05 · jump to transcript →

Now, I may be wrong, but I think this is the scene with the boy and Rachel, which is all in one shot. Yes, it's all in one shot. And it went over so well that there was no need. They didn't make a second take. He did it in one take and never made any more. They didn't need them.

1:12:47 · jump to transcript →

This is another one-take scene, by the way. We're looking for love, Ruby, in the only foolish way you knew how. Yeah, it's a great line. And Simon Callow, in his great book on the film, he wondered who came up with the line because it's not in the Davis Grubb novel, and it is in the first draft of the AG. But it's in the page. It's marooned in a page of a lot of other dialogue, so it's the brilliance of Lawton to say, no, that's your line. That's the only line they need, you know? Yes, it really wasn't in the novel, and it enriches the characters that Grubb had created.

1:16:12 · jump to transcript →

Note that we will hear only the crickets and Antoine's footfalls during his run, so we can deduce that they have been added to the soundtrack by Foley artists in post-production. Live sound would give us the engine noise of the truck on which the camera is mounted, so Truffaut is using his art to conceal itself here. The upcoming continuous shot of Antoine running lasts one minute and 21 seconds, making it the longest single shot in the film.

1:36:03 · jump to transcript →