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Credit: Far Out \/ Rollins Maxwell<\/p>\n
Wed 27 May 2026 18:45, UK <\/p>\n
Pauline Kael<\/a> made a few enemies in her time as one of the most truthful film critics in America, but it was her reluctance to hold back, to really dig into why a film didn\u2019t work \u2013 at least in her opinion \u2013 that made her so reliable. <\/p>\n She stood her ground, which is how she ended up in the proverbial burn book of filmmakers like Ridley Scott and George Lucas. The critic went in hard on Star Wars, finding it to have all the grace of a children\u2019s circus, and in response, Lucas crafted the villainous character General Kael for Willow. But Kael was never going to bow down to filmmakers and place them on a pedestal simply because they made big movies. <\/p>\n Even directors who had changed everything, like French New Wave auteur Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, couldn\u2019t expect themselves to be immune from Kael\u2019s pen. While she appreciated his debut feature, The 400 Blows, as the director added sequels to his coming-of-age series, she found herself less and less engaged with his ideas. <\/p>\n The Antoine Doinel series<\/a> saw Truffaut return to his beloved semi-autobiographical protagonist over the years, whom he\u2019d first introduced in The 400 Blows back in 1959, played by 14-year-old Jean-Pierre Leaud. In 1962, Truffaut delivered the 32-minute sequel Antoine and Colette, which, like the first film, borrowed many elements from the filmmaker\u2019s youth. In this instance, he was inspired by a teenage infatuation he had with a woman whom he went as far as living opposite, just so he could see her.<\/p>\n Then came Stolen Kisses in 1968, which saw Antoine get engaged to the latest object of his affection, Christine, although not without bumping into Colette, now a wife and a mother. The movie was pretty well-received, giving audiences much more to bite into compared to the initial half-hour sequel Truffaut had delivered years earlier. But then, just two years later, he released another sequel, Bed and Board \u2013\u00a0and Kael was not on board at all.<\/p>\n Her main issue was that Truffaut seemed to be losing sight of the Antoine we once knew and loved, no matter how difficult he could be. With every film, Kael felt like the director strayed from the autobiographical elements of the character that really buoyed the narrative of each film, leaving us with an unconvincing portrait. <\/p>\n \u201cThe problem in the Doinel series started, I think, when Truffaut stopped seeing Antoine as a surrogate,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWhat had begun in The 400 Blows as a portrait of the artist as an impetuous<\/a>, driven young boy turned into wayward vignettes of a tame, odd, somewhat withdrawn young man seek\u00ading conventional happiness \u2013 Antoine getting comic jobs and losing them in fluky ways, Antoine\u2019s marriage and baby, Antoine\u2019s infidelity, and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n Adding, \u201cWhen Antoine arrives at the limited view of life and the gag humour of Bed and Board, the viewer may ask, \u2018But is this where that marvellous child was heading? Is this dry insularity all that\u2019s left of his strength? Why isn\u2019t he outgoing anymore?’\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDespite the comic surface, it\u2019s a sad progression \u2013 a contraction of Antoine\u2019s possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Pauline Kael on Bed and Board<\/p>\n Even worse was Love on the Run, the final instalment in the series, which came out in 1979 and utilised many clips from the previous movies to pad out the runtime. But to Kael, Bed and Board would always be the most offensive, because it seemed to fail in every aspect. <\/p>\n \u201cIt isn\u2019t just that Truffaut doesn\u2019t have much to say about Antoine anymore, but that one doesn\u2019t believe what he says,\u201d Kael concluded, \u201cThe texture of the movie is false.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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