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The Little Fugitive

Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin and Ray Ashley

"the most beautiful films to show children are not the ones where the filmmaker tries to protect the world, but often those where another child plays the role of buffer , an intermediary, in this exhibition in the world, evil that is part, to the incomprehensible. (...) We like, we can relate to that even when we do not understand more than he did the evil that surrounds it (so we identify with its lack), protects against attacks in the world as they are present in the film, without much to hide. " Alain Bergala (Hypothesis theatrical)

Francois Truffaut movie venerated pre-Elvis, pre-new wave, and when it is viewed, it is understood why. Furious at having to keep his little brother, a teenager simulated with the help of his buddies a fatal accident rifle. Believing he killed his big brother, little flees and wanders for a few days in the middle of Coney Island fairground. Filmed live in the streets of New York, serving the acute affects of childhood sharp (cruelty, grief, loneliness, credulity ...), carried out collectively, Little Fugitive is a hidden treasure of world cinema, the unknown ancestor the 400 Blows, L'Enfance nue or Shadows, a modest but crucial touchstone in the history of modern cinema. A film to see and greet.

Little Fugitive was in his time, the cover of issue 31 of Cahiers du Cinema, a number which, in the writings of Bazin, devoted four pages to the film, but posterity was to win the favor of another text, famous , in which Truffaut attacked the French quality. Which Truffaut, a few years later, explaining that without this small New York film tinkered with camera in hand by two photographers (Morris Engel had covered the Normandy invasion) and an author of children's books, or The 400 Blows or In Breathless would probably born. So as a milestone in the mythology of the Young Turks, and, even more, link Missing from the history of modernity (equidistant from neorealism and early films of New Wave) that The Little Fugitive is seen pulling, by Carlotta, cinematic limbo where he slept until now. For this reason, and without quite the masterpiece which could be dreaming its rarity, the film proves to be doubly exciting.

formally endorsed it, seven years before Breathless, the modern time as a field of possibilities discovered by a surge technique: the origin of the bill's documentary film (pictures stolen in the heart of the crowd on the mode of photojournalism urban - Engel was student Berenice Abbott), there is the invention of a revolutionary little camera, a 35mm compact camera carelessly Engel and a friend who was going to fantasize Godard to the point that it sent Raoul Coutard in New York to study gear closely, and even tried to acquire it. But, more importantly perhaps, is his story that never stops turning back to modern. A child wanders: what would be the pitch, and it is above all a responsible proposal echoes, upstream (eg, Germany Year Zero) and downstream (of course, The 400 Blows). Joey, typical American kid from Brooklyn (Converse and Colt plastic) is entrusted to his elder brother while the mother goes to the bedside of their sick grandmother. The older he then plays a cruel trick, feigning injury that will force the rifle to take her little legs around his neck and fled in the direction of Coney Island, where he spent the weekend alone, wandering between the beach and rides.

The first part, in Brooklyn, is very beautiful, and announced a whole section of realism in New York, Shirley Clarke Cassavetes. But it is obviously wandering Joey among the attractions of Coney Island that is the heart of the film. If the child is a character-key movies modern, is that Deleuze explained about De Sica, and Truffaut, "in the adult world, the child has some motor weakness, but that makes it more capable to see and hear" . That is exactly what is at stake in this story of learning where the adult world is reduced, in the eyes of the boy, the size of a carnival: a moment of pure wandering, both enchanted ( delivered to himself, the kid put their heart's content) and anxiety, when the world is both experience and performance, and gives each image in the sweet smells of candy floss, as a first . Jerome
Momcilovic

A milestone in the history of modern cinema
addition to its subject and the exceptional courage of the young Richie Andrusco, which also holds the attention in The Little Fugitive, it's definitely quality Film treatment, quality is expressed by a great formal simplicity and ease of filming surprising for the time. In fact, filmed in a small team with a small camera that prevents the remark that really, the viewer is embedded in the system put in place included in the maelstrom of a city and his party appears without obviously artificial dimension of the set. And printing sample the fruits of the New Wave, before being, is not trivial.

Indeed, after the director of The Last Metro, which stated that without The Little Fugitive, there would have been neither The 400 Blows or Breathless, we must recognize this film a clear historical importance in History of cinema. Thus, as has been able to write Alain Bergala, the film of Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin and Ray Ashley imposes inspiration biographical referred naturalist and enchantment about it, while dealing with his scamp of a hero, a character so endearing carefree and mocking. Proving determining fact for François Truffaut, The Little Fugitive was at least as much as Jean-Luc Godard opens a cinema freed from traditional constraints and driven by a freedom and an incredible passion while filming. Therefore, one of the manifestos of the New Wave is not far and it will not chance to lead the Helvetic filmmaker looking to buy a few years later the prototype was used in the film but rather the memory embedded and clear viewing of which left its mark.

Similarly, economy of means of production and which Little Fugitive is proof, not unlike the best independent films of the era. Thus, before the films of John Cassavetes and penniless in the continuity of neorealism, this superb film is characterized by an original method of financing (underwriting) and the intense involvement of each of its members, well beyond the current job only constraints . Therefore, do not consider The Little Fugitive as one of the landmarks of Western cinema in the second half of the twentieth century is all the more regrettable that this film was rewarded also by a Silver Lion in Venice this year its release and chose the venerable Library U.S. Congress, as a work to be preserved because of its cultural, historical and aesthetic.

In short, memorable and remarkable film from every point of view, The Little Fugitive is one that you mark and leave a trace in you forever. Moreover, if the extraordinary advance of its freedom and its deep processing are matched only fair paint America at the time, it does not relieve least one of the most sensitive and stories touching the cinema then was able to shoot and to see ... Jean-Baptiste Guegan

Records
Cahiers du Cinema