La fugue d’une vie / Une vie en fugue

This from an exchange with J.A.

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In the course of something else this morning, I recalled my emotion over the last 4:30 minutes of Truffaut’s Les 400 coups. I probably taught it dozens of time but it still brings tears to my eyes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a4jGNoag_1g

I’m linking this YouTube clip to you because of an additional issue, the direct allusion to Rimbaud, both iconograph (look at that last image) and implicitly textual, to say nothing of the notion of fugues (en français), which my life has consisted of a long sequence of.

Elle est retrouvée.
Quoi ? – L’Eternité.
C’est la mer allée

Avec le soleil.

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Forgot to mention that the cinematographic technique Truffaut was playing with is called, in French, un travelling. Moving cam.

He even does a travelling interruptus at one point, by dropping Antoine and then picking him up at the end of a plan, to be differenciated from a shot, since once he starts jogging there is but a single acknowledged take, though there is nonetheless montage.

Basically, Truffaut was creating the image or illusion of a travelling, a meta-travelling, while depicting a fugue. An adolescent fugue.

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