Now available on Netflix Instant is Francois Truffaut’s 1976 film listed under its original and more literal English language title “Pocket Money” though usually known as “Small Change” in the US.
Whether it’s the film’s seemingly modest ambitions, episodic structure or the haphazard viewing availability in the US, Pocket Money/Small Change doesn’t have the same cache as Truffaut’s first three Nouvelle Vague masterpieces: The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, Jules & Jim or the late period joie de filmmaking summation, Day For Night.
But within a great director’s filmography, there is often an underrated gem that is every bit as enjoyable as the masterpieces. For Truffaut, I think Small Change is that film.
Filmed in Thiers in South Central France and shooting with a cast of untrained actors, Truffaut's unobtrusive camara creates the illusion that he just chanced upon an entire town filled with Antoine Doinels. A town filled with real children who get in trouble with their parents, clock watch at school, tell dirty jokes, commit petty theft, watch mademoiselles undress through binoculars, and have their first kisses. The film is a primer on the adorable precocious little rascal scamp kids with cute foreign accents genre.
The scene that is most often cited from the film is the sequence where a two-year-old-boy is momentarily left alone in their apartment by his mother and chases their family cat onto the window ledge. As the scene progresses, the viewer sees where this is all going, but can’t believe the movie would let the unimaginable happen. Onlookers spot the baby on the ledge and are frozen in place, shocked.
The baby holds onto the ledge by his fingers, and you think that mommy will grab him. But no, his grip slips and he falls six or seven floors to the ground like Blanket Jackson if Michael actually dropped him off the hotel balcony. This is NOT happening the viewer thinks.
Via an absurd deus ex machina of an edit, we cut to a close-up as the baby lands softly on his butt as if he were only dropped a foot off the ground. The baby says, “Gregory go boom,” and giggles with delight. The onlookers are horrified but amazed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKYSODuFs4k&feature=related
The scene is unrealistic, but the larger point is made in the next scene when one of the neighbors says to his wife, “It’s terrifying to think of the way kids are in constant danger.”
The wife says, “That’s not exactly true. I mean, whereas an adult would have been laid out for good, kids are solid as a rock. They stumble through life, but they’re not hurt. They’re much tougher than we are.”
"Children exist in a state of grace," another character remarks at a different point in the film. "They pass untouched through dangers that would destroy an adult."
My son, the Dude, is almost always putting himself in a perilous situation, whether engaged in some epic climbing expedition or just running full speed into something solid, like a wall for instance. Before I was a parent, I had always marveled at how little kids ran into things and seemingly just shook it off like it was nothing.
Little kids don’t twist their ankles, or wrench their backs or strain their obliques. What does happen is they bang their heads. They hit everything with their head like it’s a guided missile. And hard too! Really hard it seems. Invariably at some point, the dude will bang his head, and I’ll go, “Oh, shit!” And then look at my wife, Supermommy, like “Did you just see that?”
If you don’t have children, you’re probably saying to yourself, “That’s why you have to childproof the house.” That’s what I thought too. Believe me, there is no childproofing from the forces of gravity. Their little legs will trip them up. They will fall. And they will hit their heads on something hard in a way you had never thought possible.
But what do you do? What can you do? When the Dude goes boom, I pick him up crying and I say, “Are you alright, Dude?” And the Dude's like, “Daddy, what the flip just happened?”
I say in response the only thing that can usually make the pain go away, “Do you want some juice?”
The dude smiles and says, “Duice!”
The pain evaporates, as does the memory of the pain and what risky action caused it. The Dude gets his juice and is off trying to climb the kitchen table.
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