albicocca1
Palermo
It should be possible to ask if you know this Truffaut movie without sounding ever so pretentious. I mean, if you have seen it, then you would have a big clue to which movie I meant just from looking at this picture. I’d argue that it is a totally unpretentious movie, but that back in the seventies, French films would have only shown internationally in a select few art house cinemas, so it seems all la-di-da, high-brow, to talk about it now. Of course in France it was hugely successful: L’Argent de poche, or Small Change.
It’s a film about the lives of children, about innocence, about abuse, about powerlessness. There’s a scene where a toddler crawls out from the window of a high building, and falls. This being the pre CGI 1970’s, the actual toddler was switched for an unconvincing doll. This being Truffaut, the toddler gets up after falling and happily runs off. If you’ve seen that film then you remember that scene, it haunts your nightmares as a new parent. Years later when you see a picture of a doll shoved through the bars of a window you cannot help but wonder; did the photographer ever see Small Change?
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, Rachel Irving and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
