Jean-Luc Godard's Charlotte et son jules (1959)

This early, thirteen-minute short 'about' Charlotte and her 'jules' (or boyfriend) Jean is in effect almost entirely a monologue by Jean-Paul Belmondo* in his bedsit where Charlotte (Anne Colette) has returned after leaving him for another. He talks all the time, insults her lover, tells her she loves him, won't let her say a word while she makes faces at him behind his back and a guy (in fact Gérard Blain) waits for her in his car outside. Belmondo says she must love him or why has she returned? She opens her mouth to say 'To pick up my toothbrush', which she does and walks out the door.

*The voice we hear isn't in fact Belmondo's but Godard's, although there's some bad lip-syncing.

Gérard Blain's Un enfant dans la foule | A Child in the Crowd (1976)

Gérard Blain is perhaps better known as a actor than a director, appearing in early films such as Truffaut's Les Mistons (1957) and Chabrol's Le Beau Serge in particular, but this autobiographical work of his is all his own. Although a comparison could be made between Truffaut's films culled from his own life, this shows more the influence of Bressonian austerity, also using non-actors. Blain had an unhappy, lonely childhood and sought the company of a number of other people, seen here mainly (but not exclusively) as older men: of course, as Philippe is played by a pre-adolescent and a thirteen-year-old, any vaguely sexual element (the gift of a tie passed around his neck, for instance) being played down, implied rather than explicit. What we see is a rebellious, theiving young person taking advantage of anyone he can, such as the German enemy, members of the Resistance, and Americans. But his essential care for people shows through in such actions as trying to console a tondue, a young French woman stripped naked, shaved bald and hounded down the street for having a relationship with a Nazi.