Zazie dans le métro

A product of the French New Wave, this movie is more than 40 years old, but it still has the powers to make you leave your mouth open, either to laugh or just to be in awe. Extremely different from anything you can find on the screens today, "Zazie" is able to entertain you even without a coherent plot or a bunch of lines that make sense. A dark-short-haired witty little girl goes around an extremely colorful Paris meeting unusual and funny people. Does this remind you of anything? Actually "Zazie" had already gone beyond the borders of the land that would be explored by "Amelie" 40 years later. Maybe this means that the future is behind our backs? It is time to turn around.

This has to be seen to be believed! Malle seems just as well to be the victim of Zazie's dark whirlwind surrealism as the audience themselves. Never again achieved an adolescent movie character such an anarchic quality. Despite all the displays of technical outrageousness and pure buffoonery, the pic never feels as superficially sketch-like as many of Dick Lester's works. And the complete lack of warmheartedness is a relief in a picture featuring a young girl!

Now that's a truly original way to declass French bourgeoisie and throw an anti-Fascist pie in their faces! And it's one of the few hommages to silent comedy (amongst sundry allusions to cinema and social topics) that really work. And it's one of Malle's best.

9 out of 10 polar bears

I've just seen this movie on DVD and enjoyed the humor and wit. According to some Dutch and French web-pages like http://perso.orange.fr/cinefrance/1960/zazie.html Zazie is not played by 12yo Catherine but by a 9½yo Milène, what seems right to me by the looks of her, she's definitely too petite for a 12yo, age 9 or 10 seems much more likely. In the trailer she is described as a 9½yo too. Her lines seem a little too adult now and then, but bear in mind who wrote the scenario! Louis Malle was famous for breaking taboos. This movie was intended for enjoyment, like a comedy, but with a sharp view on the changing French society. Also some comments on hypocritical ways of dealing with taboos like homosexuality and "dirty old men". Funny to see the traffic congestion in Paris, already then, and the looney effects, inspired by Tex Avery.

In the early sixties, New Wave French Cinema were very serious about themselves, with Godard and Truffaut. But Louis Malle, who was from the same generation, don't take anything seriously in this unforgettable movie. I really love the viewer analogy with the Roadrunner! Everythings goes nuts in this movie: Sounds, situations, logic, actors. It reminds us of the Mack Sennett movies. It's also got a lot of charm for the very funny and smiling face of little Demongeot playing Zazie. And how about young Philippe Noiret? He will become one of the greatest French actor of all time. Like the Jacques Tati's movies of the same era, this comedy can't grow older. Seeing today is seeing it with the same joy as in 1960. A must!

Great cinema, with a wonderful exuberance and style. Louis Malle showed his great talent and versatility in this romp of cheeky comedy. Blessed with a Zazie that (for me ) captures the essence of the character originally created by Raymond Queneau, this is a 60's French film that continues to bring naive pleasure to those to whom it is a memory of the renaissance of French cinema in the early 60's, and (hopefully) will still retain a few inspirational moments for those see this movie thirty years on and who have had the benefit of later comedic directors who learned from this well-crafted and thoroughly entertaining movie.