Naked Childhood (L’enfance nue)

With Sylvie Pialat in person

Dir. Maurice Pialat. 1968, 83 mins. 35mm. With Michel Terrazon, Raoul Billerey, Maurice Coussonneau, Pierrette Deplanque, Linda Gutemberg. Terrazon gives one of the most affectless child performances ever recorded in Pialat’s wrenching film, playing a troubled orphan being shunted between foster families until he begins to hope that he has discovered a home. Pialat both acknowledges and builds upon the autobiographical directness of François Truffaut’s revolutionary The 400 Blows (1959) in his own fiction feature debut (which Truffaut produced). Its vivid verity convinced many that the director was himself a foundling. “A simple story, simply told and awkwardly played, in an amazingly, almost maddeningly, texturally busy space… A monograph on working-class taste.” —Jean-Pierre Gorin. Preceded by L’amour existe (1960, 21 mins. 35mm).

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