Les Mistons

A lyrical and nostalgic work tinged with sadness and resentment, the twenty-three minute short Les Mistons [1957, aka The Mischief Makers), was the debut film of former critic turned filmmaker Francois Truffaut and one of the first films to set the tone for the Nouvelle Vague movement in French cinema. Filmed outside in the streets and parks of Nime using natural light and a small film crew, the movie chronicles an eventful summer in the lives of five adolescent boys who become fascinated with Bernadette, a sensuous young woman who awakens their first feelings of sexual desire. The boys follow her everywhere, spying on her and her lover Gerald but their adoration turns to scorn when their attempts to attract her attention are greeted with mild annoyance or barely noticed at all. The boys escalate their campaign to torment her with various pranks but a tragic event puts an end to their hijinks and opens their eyes to the real world. Les Mistons would introduce several central motifs in Truffaut's work that would recur frequently in his films over the course of his career such as the observance of adult behavior through the eyes of children and the deification of women as mysterious objects of desire. The film also displays mercurial shifts in tone, going from a freewheeling playfulness to melancholy resignation. There is no denying that Les Mistons is suffused with a love of the cinema and you can see the influence of the Lumiere Brothers, Mack Sennett (the sequence with the garden hose) and even Carol Reed (the ending appears to be inspired by the final shot in The Third Man, 1949). Despite its importance as Truffaut's first film and a prize winner at the Brussels film festival, it is distinctly French in a way that may put off some critics and moviegoers. In her review of it, Pauline Kael wrote, "As an experimental work in the medium, it shows a marvelous command of sensual image and atmosphere (the opening bicycle ride, for example), but to Americans the total conception may seem just too fearfully sensitive, precocious, and precious. French artists are so narcissistic about their lost innocence." (From Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) Truffaut later revealed that "it was really and truly while filming The Mischief Makers that I came to realize...that the choice of story for a film is more important than one thinks and that you cannot simply jump into things. I realized, for example, that...there was no connection between the lives of those five children and the pair of lovers. Every time I had to shoot things that were truly connected with the subject, like the pestering pranks played on the pair by the five children, I was ill at ease. Whereas every time I did things with the children that were almost documentary, I was happy and everything went well. We were making a kind of investigation into truth, if you will, using the children, because they have a terrific feeling for realism, and because that interested me. It was thanks to the mistakes of The Mischief Makers that I came to realize, for The 400 Blows [1959], that this time I had to stick close to childhood and, above all, very close to what is documentary, working with the minimum of fiction." (from Truffaut by Truffaut) Director: Francois Truffaut Screenplay: Maurice Pons, Francois Truffaut Cinematography: Jean Malige Film Editing: Cecile Decugis Music: Maurice Leroux Cast: Gerard Blain (Gerard), Bernadette Lafont (Bernadette Jouve), Michel Francois (Narrator), Alain Baldy (Kid), Robert Bulle (Kid). BW-23m. by Jeff Stafford SOURCES: Truffaut by Truffaut Francois Truffaut by Annette Insdorf Kiss Kiss Bang Bang by Pauline Kael