Baisers volés (1968)
Directed by François Truffaut

Film Review

Six years after Antoine Doinel appeared in the Antoine et Colette segment of the compendium film L'Amour à vingt ans (1962), François Truffaut felt the time was right to resurrect his famous alter ego, who first saw the light of day in Les Quatre cents coups (1959).

By this time, Jean-Pierre Léaud, the young actor who played Antoine in these two earlier films, had established himself as an actor in France, most notably for his appearance in Jean-Luc Godard's film La Chinoise (1967).  By the time Baisers volés was made, Léaud had developed his own personality - a mixture of unpredictable rebel, loveable good-for-nothing and womanising scamp - which was perfectly in tune with Truffaut's vision of the Doinel character.

In Baisers volés, Truffaut continues to use Doinel to relate incidents from his own life, most notably his terrible experiences in the army.  In 1951, after having absconded without leave, a 19 year old François  Truffaut was arrested for desertion.  He spent several gruelling months in a German prison before being offered a dishonourable discharge.

In stark contrast to the elegiac poignancy of Les Quatres cents coups and the emotional intensity of Jules et Jim (1962), Baisers volés is a much lighter film, a sentimental romantic comedy about a young man finding his feet (and constantly tripping up) in an adult world.  The film's title comes from a line in Charles Trenet's song Que reste-il de nos amours? which is also used as the film's signature tune.

This is a film which also manages to capture the mood of the time it was made.  The year 1968 has a special significance in the recent history of France.  The student demonstrations and general strikes that year shook the de Gaulle government to its foundations and resulted in a burgeoning youth culture.  Although Truffaut sympathised with these events, he never directly reflected them in his films, unlike his contemporaries.  Despite that, there is an air of quiet subversion which runs through Baisers volés (and indeed the subsequent two Doinel films).

One major political event which marked Truffaut at the time he was making this film was the decision by the French government to remove Henri Langlois from his post as director of the Cinémathèque Française.  Truffaut leant his support to the outcry from well-known actors and directors to have Langlois re-instated, and this meant he had less time than he planned to direct this film.  Truffaut dedicated Baisers volés to Langlois, and indeed the opening shot takes us right up to the doors of the Musée du cinéma in Paris, appropriately closed for business.

Truffaut believed that Baisers volés would fail at the box office because of the distraction caused by the Langlois affair.  He was wrong.  This proved to be his most successful film in France since Les Quatre cents coups, and it was a surprising success in the United States. Truffaut was by now so attached to his Doinel character that he re-used him in two subsequent films, Domicile conjugal (1970) and L'Amour en fuite (1979).

Film Synopsis

Antoine Doinel is twenty when he is discharged from the army for his frequent lapses of discipline.  Returning to Paris he hopes to resume his former love affair with Christine Darbon but he has difficulty adjusting to civilian life once more.  He gets a job as a night porter in a hotel but is summarily dismissed when he chances on an adulterous affair.  This leads him to be recruited by a private detective agency, and his first mission is to follow a magician with a dubious love life.  After he bungles this assignment, Antoine next finds himself working for Monsieur Tabbard, the owner of a shoe shop who is convinced that the whole world is against him, in particular his wife.  Tabbard's fears appear justified when Antoine falls head over heels in love with his wife.  Meanwhile, Christine is being trailed wherever she goes by a suspicious looking stranger.  Antoine Doinel's sentimental education is only just beginning...