If Truffaut had bothered to see this gem before penning his infamous essay in which he tarred master craftsmen like Duvivier (who wrote and directed this film), Carne, Renoir, Allegret, Jeanson, Bost, Aurenche, Prevert, etc with the same 'incompetent' brush he would not have had the gall to shoot even one frame of his own take on the subject, 'The 400 Yawns'. As it is Duvivier is still being revived after 70 years whilst with any luck the Truffaut-Godard drek will sink without trace long before that. Here Duvivier obtains an exquisite and heartbreaking performance from ten-year-old Robert Lynen (one of the few French actors to take an active part in the 'Resistance' for which he paid with his life) and it's difficult to imagine what Duvivier said or did to Lynen prior to shooting the scene in the barn where he trembles on the brink of suicide but whatever it was he should bottle it and make it available to directors everywhere. There have, of course, been 'child' actors before - one thinks of Bobby Henry in 'The Fallen Idol', Claude Jarman Jnr, in 'The Yearling', Brandon de Wilde in 'Shane' - and there will be again but it is doubtful indeed if one will ever eclipse Lynen. The story is unashamedly lifted from Cinderella and comes complete with two ugly siblings, one of each sex and a wicked Mother instead of a Stepmother, which Comedie Francaise actress Catherine Fonteney brings off to a fare-thee-well without resorting to chewing the scenery a la Charles Laughton. Harry Baur turns in sterling work as the father whose only crime is in failing to notice he has a young son whose life is reduced to misery by a cold, uncaring mother and two spoiled brats. Duvivier was a master director (he would use Lynen again first in his poetic La Belle Equipe with the great Gabin and later in Un Carnet de Bal with Raimu, Louis Jouvet and Harry Baur (also a victim of the nazis). In sum: a wonderful, lyrical evocation of a tainted childhood. 9/10
