This 35mm screening is part of the Chronic Youth Film Festival. Full details here.
Barbican introduction:
During the Nazi occupation, thirteen-year-old Paul lives with his mother and grandmother in a small Parisian apartment after being abandoned by his father. A lonely child, he looks for affection wherever he can find it, be it with Nazi occupiers or French Resistance fighters. Honest and ambiguous, Gérard Blain’s minimalistic style makes for a powerful approach to taboo subject matter, depicting the vulnerability of innocence and a child's profound loneliness. Undeniably the work of an outsider, Blain's cinema can be contextualised alongside contemporaries Maurice Pialat and Jean Eustache or as the heir to Robert Bresson. Providing a counterpoint to the rich history of French coming-of-age films, A Child in the Crowd is the neglected little brother of 400 Blows, mirroring this canonical film's subject matter but diverging greatly in approach and style. François Truffaut's first short film, The Mischief Makers, stars Gérard Blain and Bernadette Lafont, in a remembrance of youth.
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