Une belle fille comme moi

I must begin by admitting my headlong love for Truffaut's work. As connoisseur ratings go, this might not be his best film (Jules et Jim, Argent de Poche, Le Dernier Metro, Baisers Volés, Tirez sur le Pianiste, and Les 400 Coups are all at least as good and possibly better) but there is just so much life, tongue in cheek, unbridled pleasure in directing and in treating life as art, and the acting is so deceptively simple that I have to say this is probably my most favourite film by one of my most favourite directors. The initial sequence with the young dilettante's flatulent and cursing father kicking her rugby style sets the tone for the rest of the film, consistently pitting the stupidity of the male against the instinctive and openly unscrupulous intelligence of the leading female (there is hope yet in the typist but she is not the one all the men fall in love with...) Glorious comic touches sprinkle the film but if I had to select the cherry on this cake that would be the sequence where Denner, the rat exterminator, is waiting for Bernadette to come back from her visit to the singer. Look at how he tries to establish where the racing cars are that he hears but cannot see on the open road! Oh you must see this!