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Title: Antoine Doinel


Paul Iannone - January 2, 2005 06:08 PM (GMT)
Is Antoine Doinel a real person or an alter ego? If it is simply a "character" name which films did this character appear in?

Erik Nelson - January 2, 2005 07:09 PM (GMT)
Antoine Doinel is a fictional character of Francois Truffaut's that has many autobiographical elements of Truffaut's life. However, the character was also influenced by actor Jean-Pierre Leaud's character and life. I believe the Truffaut autobiographical components were strongest in THE 400 BLOWS, the first film of the series. (However, Truffaut always insisted that Leaud had a significant impact on the character of Antoine in that film also.) The films with the older Doinel became less and less autobiographical, although there were always scenes taken out of Truffaut's life.

The films in the series are THE 400 BLOWS, ANTOINE AND COLETTE, STOLEN KISSES, BED AND BOARD, and LOVE ON THE RUN. They are available in a DVD box set from Criterion. More info here:
http://www.criterionco.com/asp/boxed_set.a...ection=synopsis

The first three are the strongest, but I like the last two films more than most people. (They also work better as chapters of a DVD set, than as independent films several years after STOLEN KISSES.)

Paul Iannone - January 2, 2005 08:25 PM (GMT)
Thanks, Erik.

A friend's wife was born and raised in France and during a recent conversation she mentioned how old Antoine Doinel is getting. I told her I was under the impression that he was just an alter-ego of Truffaut (one of his characters), but since I'm not a big Truffaut fan, I wasn't sure. Something must have been lost due to the communication gap and she was probably referring to the actor you mentioned.




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