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When François Truffaut Reviewed Blinkity Blank

When François Truffaut  Reviewed Blinkity Blank

François Truffaut was equally in form as a film critic (he started in the celebrated Cahiers du Cinéma journal), as well as a modernist director.

As a critic, he was never shy to both praise auteurs and condemn films that he thought they had absolutely no artistic value.

Norman McLaren fell easily in the former category. Truffaut thought of him as one of the "greatest filmmakers in the world", and he enthusiastically reviewed Blinkity Blank (1955) in his 1957 review [all extracts from the book The Films in My Life, 1978, Diversion Books 2014].

Blinkety Blank [sic] is an absolute unique work that bears no resemblance to anything that has been made in the 60 years of filmmaking.

In this great little film, that is only four minutes long, there is all the fantasy of Giraudoux, the mastery of Hitchcock, and the imagination of Cocteau.

 Truffaut really iked drama in his films, but he was also a fond admirer of slapstick comedy of the early 20s, a fact he really liked in McLaren's film.

 The French filmmaker goes on to stay that the film creates a new myth - the goose with the golden eyes.

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