Antoine et Antoinette (Antoine and Antoinette)

The first of Becker’s three loosely plotted postwar films on the changing structure of French life, Antoine et Antoinette follows one young working-class couple in a cramped, overcrowded Paris, and the husband’s desperate search for a missing lottery ticket. The plot, however, is merely an excuse for Becker to delve into the daily charms, tensions, and simple pleasures of proletarian Parisian life, all filmed with great sympathy and attentiveness and a marked lack of sentimentality or condemnation. Focusing on Antoinette as much as Antoine, the film also benefits from Becker’s realization that, as scriptwriter Françoise Giroud recalls, “in talking about life, you had to include women.”