Un enfant dans la foule (1976)
Directed by Gérard Blain

Film Review

It was probably no accident that Gérard Blain was one of the most emblematic actors of the French New Wave.  By temperament, Blain was as wild spirited and unconventional as the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers who made use of his acting talents in their earliest films - François Truffaut in Les Mistons (1957), Jean-Luc Godard in Charlotte et son Jules (1960) and Claude Chabrol in Le Beau Serge (1958), the film that made him a star.  It is so tempting to label Blain the 'James Dean of French cinema', but it is only in the handful of films he himself directed that the extent of his rebellious streak can be seen and fully appreciated.  In his mostly autobiographical film Un enfant dans la foule (a.k.a. A Child in the Crowd), Blain defies both the conventions of mainstream cinema and the moral sensibilities of his audience by presenting a portrait of early adolescence that is as subversive as it is searingly poignant.

In a similar vein to Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959), Blain drew heavily on his own painful experiences as a child and young teenager, laying bare the wounds that no doubt still stung in adulthood.  Like Truffaut's Antoine Doinel, Blain's adolescent alter ego Paul is an affection-starved youngster who drifts into delinquency as a result of a lack of adequate parental control.  More worryingly, he seeks out substitute parents as friends, filling his empty hours by pursuing relationships with grown-ups that would today be deemed abhorrent.  That at least some of these relationships have a sexual component is pretty self-evident (the scene in which Paul receives a gift of a necktie from one of his 'friends' has an unmistakable homoerotic undertone), but the film does not dwell on this or attempt to draw sensationalist capital from it.  Blain relies on ellipsis to imply rather than show the extent of the intimacy between Paul and his attentive buddies.  Paul is never portrayed as a victim of paedophilia but as someone for whom close adult contact (however dubious) is an essential part of his search for identity.   As in Jean Delannoy's Les Amitiés particulières (1964), Blain makes no moral judgment but merely presents Paul's experiences as a part of the natural process of growing up.  Today, it would take an exceedingly brave filmmaker to show this degree of honesty and evenhandedness when handling a subject of such delicacy.

Almost as daring as the subject matter is Blain's style of cinema, which is closely modelled on that of Robert Bresson, one of the directors Blain most admired.  The subdued lighting, grainy photography and muted colour palette lend the film a cold, documentary feel that is intensely evocative of France at the time of the Occupation - a bleak grey landscape denuded of real human feeling.  Like Bresson, Blain uses non-professional actors trained not to express any sign of outward emotion when they speak.  Paul's cruel sense of isolation is accentuated by the almost robotic lack of feeling in the people he interacts with.  Throughout the film, the boy visibly pines for the warmth of human contact when there is patently none to be had.  In doing so he makes himself a willing plaything for (mostly) men who enjoy the company of prepubescent boys.

Paul is the only character in the film capable of exhibiting a genuine human response, sometimes crying, more often smiling.  In one unforgettable scene (the most striking in Blain's entire oeuvre), he is the only person in a crowd to show compassion for a woman who has fallen foul of the anti-collaborationist purge after the Liberation.  Stripped naked and forced to kneel in humiliation before a wall, she is someone that the solitary boy can readily identify with.    There is a raw authenticity in César Chauveau's portrayal of the teenage Paul that cuts through you and leaves a lasting impression as you accompany him on his painful journey through adolescence.  The film ends with Paul confidently setting out for a career as an actor.  On the way, a stranger stops him in the street and asks him for a light.  The stranger is Blain himself.

Film Synopsis

During the Nazi Occupation of France, a 13-year-old boy named Paul lives with his mother and sister in his grandmother's cramped apartment.  It has been several years since Paul's father abandoned his family, and neither his mother nor his sister can meet the boy's emotional needs.  He plays truant from school and walks the streets of Paris, seeking out friendships with grown men.  He plays errand boy for German soldiers and, once the Liberation is underway, he gets involved in the activities of the French Resistance.  Friendly American servicemen then take him under their wing, offering both companionship and a welcome supply of cigarettes and chocolate.  After the war, still a teenager, Paul continues to befriend men and women who are much older than himself, until he finally decides to make a career for himself as an actor...