The Little Thief
Synopsis
In 1950, the 16-year-old Janine lives with her uncle and aunt somewhere in France. She steals everything that she can find, with a preference for fine lingerie and American cigarettes. She leaves school and goes to work as a maid for a middle-class family. She has an affair with an older married man as well as with a boy of her age, who is also a thief..
Credits
Director (1)
Actors (27)
Production and distribution (2)
- Executive Producers : Orly Films, Les Films du Carrosse, Renn Productions, Ciné 5, Societé d'Exploitation et de Distribution de Films (SEDIF)
- French distribution : AMLF
Full credits (19)
- Adaptation : Claude Miller, Luc Béraud, Annie Miller
- Screenwriters : François Truffaut, Claude De Givray
- Dialogue Writers : Claude Miller, Luc Béraud, Annie Miller
- Director of Photography : Dominique Chapuis
- Music Composer : Alain Jomy
- Assistant directors : Valérie Othnin-Girard, Nathan Miller, Nathalie Serrault, Sherif Scouri
- Editor : Albert Jurgenson
- Sound Recordist : Paul Lainé
- Costume designers : Catherine Bouchard, Jacqueline Bouchard
- Producers : Claude Berri, Jean-Louis Livi, Alain Vannier
- Line Producer : Jean-José Richer
- Sound Assistant : Jean-Pierre Lelong
- Assistant Operators : Thierry Jault, Guillaume Schiffman, Jean-Luc Rigaut
- Production Manager : Daniel Chevalier
- Sound editor : Nadine Muse
- Assistant Editor : Jean-Pierre Besnard
- Continuity supervisor : Annie Miller
- Production Designer : Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko
- Sound Mixer : Gérard Lamps
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Technical details
- Type : Feature film
- Genres : Fiction
- Sub-genre : Drama, Romance
- Themes : Murder, Adolescence
- Production language : French
- Production country : France
- Original French-language productions : Unspecified
- Nationality : 100% French (France)
- Production year : 1988
- French release : 21/12/1988
- Runtime : 1 h 49 min
- Current status : Released
- Visa number : 28300
- Visa issue date : 14/12/1988
- Approval : Unknown
- Production formats : Photographic camera
- Color type : Color
- Audio format : Mono
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News & awards
Selections (2)
Awards (2)
About
Review
It would be easy to wrap ''The Little Thief'' in nostalgia, to treasure it as the last legacy of Francois Truffaut. Before his death in 1984, Truffaut had written, with Claude de Givray, a brief scenario for the story of Janine, a neglected, spirited, imaginative adolescent of the 1950's. He had invented the girl more than 20 years before as Antoine Doinel's companion in ''The 400 Blows,'' but had cut the character from that film and carried her image to the end of his life.
It would be easy to wrap ''The Little Thief'' in nostalgia, to treasure it as the last legacy of Francois Truffaut. Before his death in 1984, Truffaut had written, with Claude de Givray, a brief scenario for the story of Janine, a neglected, spirited, imaginative adolescent of the 1950's. He had invented the girl more than 20 years before as Antoine Doinel's companion in ''The 400 Blows,'' but had cut the character from that film and carried her image to the end of his life.
''The Little Thief'' was to have been Truffaut's next film, and if he had lived to make it, it would have taken him full circle, back to his first feature and the subjects of childhood and adolescence that so intrigued him. Before he died, he asked the producer and director Claude Berri to take over the project, which Mr. Berri finally steered to Claude Miller, who is best known for the thriller ''Garde a Vue,'' and who worked as Truffaut's assistant director for many years.
Despite all these practical and sentimental connections, ''The Little Thief'' is not Truffaut's last film. It stands on its own as a charming, insightful work commanded by Charlotte Gainsbourg's beautiful, deft, touching performance. As Janine, she is a lost lamb trying desperately to be grown-up and independent, daring to be bad. Though ''The Little Thief'' lacks the immense grace and fluid camera work of Truffaut, it is a remarkable character portrait full of wit, charm and sadness.
In addition to the intense focus on its wily, lonely central character, ''The Little Thief'' most resembles ''The 400 Blows'' in its feeling that, as Truffaut said of his own film, ''Adolescence leaves pleasant memories only for adults who cannot remember.'' But Janine is more advanced in thievery and sexuality than Antoine. She walks out of school - where the girls have been given padlocks to stop the rash of recent thefts - looking childish, in a shabby pink dress, her hair in a lank ponytail hanging over her shoulders. She ducks into a latrine, where she changes into a stylish blue polka-dotted dress and high heels and ties her hair into a chignon. It is a mark of the film's delicacy that Janine emerges looking only marginally older.
She returns to the farm where she lives with her kind but weak uncle and her belligerent aunt (who complains that Janine is just like the mother who abandoned her, crazy for movies and men). Now Janine wears a stolen slip under the blue dress under the pink school clothes, the layers suggesting the confusion of her identity. No matter how much sexual and criminal activity she racks up, the way her bangs hang into her eyes seems childish rather than sexy, and her whispery voice is a sign of uncertainty and innocence rather than a calculated little-girl breathiness.
After she tries to rob the church, the local police suggest that the uncontrollable girl leave town. She gets a job as a maid, meets a 43-year-old married man named Michel, and determinedly sets out to have an affair with him. When Michel says he will not sleep with a virgin, Janine quickly loses her innocence to a handyman who happens to be working in the house. She does this between scenes, as if the event is totally unimportant to her. And while that touch is unconvincing, it suits the film's fierce adherence to Janine's point of view.
In fact, Michel does not seem so bad, for an adulturous older man. He sends Janine to secretarial school, and in an act of love she steals a volume of Victor Hugo's poetry for him. He only begins to resemble a waste of time when Janine meets Raoul, a handsome young thief who races motorcycles. She steals from her employers and runs off wth Raoul, only to be caught and sent to a reform school. Like Antoine, her patience for the place is very slight.
Mr. Miller creates a strong sense of the atmosphere that shapes Janine, especially the rural village where a white-haired woman who owns the bar doubles as an abortionist. But the film relies on Miss Gainsbourg, who has also appeared in Mr. Miller's ''Charlotte and Lulu,'' and who was the single redeeming feature in Agnes Varda's recent ''Kung Fu Master.'' Few actors at any age have given such an engaging and wise performance.
© Caryn James, "The New York Times", Aug. 25, 1969
Source : movies.nytimes.com
