An Audition

It's so much easier to fill in the gaps of your film education than your literary education. It might take me a couple of months to read War and Peace, and much longer if it's not translated, because I don't know Russian. Yet, it took me less than two hours tonight to watch The 400 Blows, which was incroyable.

I won't go on and on about the movie, because it's embarrassing enough that I hadn't seen it before now.

The DVD I watched included bonus footage of the remarkable lead actor, Jean-Pierre Léaud, when he tried out for the part. I'm including the clip below. The initial section, featuring Léaud alone, is priceless, and a conversation between him and Patrick Auffay, who would be cast as his friend in truancy, is also great. Stick around for the second half, which features Richard Kanayan. He ended up being cast as another student. (If you've seen the movie, he's the one who ruins his notebook page by page with ink blots.) His voice and overall aspect in the audition are both charming and sad. He's visibly nervous, and though he'd go on to a role in Truffaut's next movie, Tirez Sur Le Pianiste, I'm disappointed to see he didn't have a longer career.