History Film / ZazieDansLeMetro

''Zazie dans le Métro'' (which translates as ''Zazie in the Subway'', sometimes simply called ''Zazie'') is a 1960 French film directed by Creator/LouisMalle.

''Zazie dans le Métro'' is a 1960 film from France directed by Creator/LouisMalle.

* VideoCredits: Film clips of all the main characters appear along with their names at the end.

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--> '''Gabriel''': I got a confession stuck in my craw. I can't hold it in no more! I'll say nothing of my youth. Of my upbringing, I had none. Of my education, there's little to tell. On this score, there's no more to say. Now I come to my military service on which I won't dwell. A bachelor early on, life made me what I am. Rise, descend, descend, rise, come, go--so does Man until he finally vanishes. A taxi bringeth him. An elevator taketh him away. Neither the Tower nor the Pantheon take any note. All Paris is a dream. Zazie is a reverie. All this is a reverie within a dream. A reverie within a dream....And over there, way out yonder, the cemetery is piled high with former Parisians, who went up and down countless steps, to and fro along endless streets, until in the end they went and were no more. Pleasure bringeth them, a hearse taketh them away. Meanwhile, the Tower rusts, the Pantheon cracks, quicker than their bones rot and melt away in the humus of the woeful metropolis. But I...I am alive! And there my knowledge ceases. Of the cabbie and my niece, 1,000 feet up in the air, and of my sweet spouse, Albertine, back at the hearth, at this precise moment, I know only this: that they are almost dead since they are not here. Created in a flash, animated in a splash, negated in a dash.

** Gabriel and Charles continually misidentifying the same church as different buildings - Panthéon, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Madeleine,_Paris La Madeleine]], [[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caserne_de_Reuilly Caserne de Reuilly]]... And then it is misidentfied by the official Paris guiding tour as the medieval [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Chapelle Sainte-Chapelle!]] (It is in fact the 19-century [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Vincent-de-Paul,_Paris church of Vincent de Paul.]])

** Gabriel and Charles continually misidentifying the same church as different buildings - Panthéon, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Madeleine,_Paris La Madeleine]], [[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caserne_de_Reuilly Caserne de Reuilly]]... And then it is misidentfied [[UpToEleven by the official Paris guiding tour as the medieval]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Chapelle Sainte-Chapelle!]] (It is in fact the 19-century [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Vincent-de-Paul,_Paris church of Vincent de Paul.]])

A middle-aged man named Gabriel comes to the train station in Paris. His sister Jeanne is visiting the city from somewhere else to have a weekend of sex with her lover, so she dumps her daughter Zazie, approximately ten years old, in Gabriel's care for the weekend. Zazie, as it turns, out, is a proto-Bart Simpson from France, with a foul mouth and a highspirited attitude who delights in insulting her neighbors. Her one goal in her weekend visit with her uncle is to ride the Paris Metro...but it's on strike.

** At the flea market where the pedophile buys Zazie blue jeans, someone is selling a child. The child is wearing a sign that says "SECONDHAND".

* TrashTheSet: It doesn't really count as ProsceniumReveal because the movie has obviously been presented as a movie earlier--the cafe set keeps getting remade from scene to scene to scene. But the bar brawl that ends the film totally destroys the restaurant set that it's being filmed in, then destroys ''another'' set apparently build around that one. Before its over cameramen and boom mic operators are getting swallowed up in the chaos.

** Gabriel and Charles continually misidentifying the same church as different buildings - Panthéon, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Madeleine,_Paris La Madeleine]], [[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caserne_de_Reuilly Caserne de Reuilly]]... And then it is misidentfied [[UpToEleven by the official Paris guiding tour as a medieval]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Chapelle Sainte-Chapelle!]] (It is in fact a 19-century [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Vincent-de-Paul,_Paris church of Vincent de Paul.]])

** Gabriel and Charles continually misidentifying the same church as different buildings - [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panth%C3%A9on Panthéon]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Madeleine,_Paris La Madeleine]], [[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caserne_de_Reuilly Caserne de Reuilly]]... And then it is misidentfied [[UpToEleven by the official Paris guiding tour as a medieval]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Chapelle Sainte-Chapelle!]] (It is in fact a 19-century [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Vincent-de-Paul,_Paris church of Vincent de Paul.]])

** Gabriel and Charles continually misidentifying the same church as different buildings - [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panth%C3%A9on Panthéon]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Madeleine,_Paris La Madeleine]], [[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caserne_de_Reuilly Caserne de Reuilly]]... And then it is misidentfied [[UpToEleven by the official Paris guiding tour]] as a medieval [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Chapelle Sainte-Chapelle!]] (It is in fact a 19-century [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Vincent-de-Paul,_Paris church of Vincent de Paul.]])

** Gabriel and Charles continually misidentifying the same church as different buildings - Panthéon, La Madeleine, Caserne de Reuilly... And then it is misidentfied [[UpToEleven by the official Paris guiding tour as a medieval Sainte-Chapelle!]] (It is in fact a 19-century [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Vincent-de-Paul,_Paris church of Vincent de Paul.]])

** Gabriel continually misidentifying the same church. (It's St. Chapelle Cathedral.)

** The entire LiveActionCartoon chase sequence, which is just that, a long sequence of the film shot to closely mimic an old WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes cartoon. At one point in the scene Zazie turns into two different Zazies, one of which throws the blue jeans over the pedophile's head to another one.

* BarBrawl: The dinner that the whole gang goes to after the show--Gabriel, Zazie, Albertine, the chorus girls, the German groupies, the guy in the polar bear suit, the whole cast basically--degenerates into a fight. Then it degenerates into a ridiculous, epic brawl that literally destroys the set. Then Pedro/Trouscaillon/whoever arrives with what looks like a bunch of riot police, and attacks, and the set around ''that'' set is destroyed, in a long sequence of utter chaos. Zazie sleeps through it all, except at one point where she wakes up, flings a plate of pasta at someone, and goes back to sleep.

* NothingHereButUsStatues: At one point in the LiveActionCartoon sequence, Zazie has the good luck to encounter some statues that are the same size as her and dressed identically to her. She hides among them while the puzzled pedophile tries to figure out which one is her.

** There's a guy in a polar bear suit at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

* {{Undercrank}}: Done repeatedly to reinforce the mood of bizarre surrealism, as people move around erratically. For one particular scene, the actors playing Gabriel and Zazie walked very slowly in a crowd scene while the camera was turned at 12 fps. So when the film was sped up to normal speed of 24 fps, they appeared to be walking normally while everyone else appeared to be zooming around them.

* PottyMouth: Zazie curses a lot. When she is told that the Metro is closed for a strike, she says "Damn and shit!"

* MouthyKid: Zazie is very mouthy, complaining loudly about the Metro being closed, pestering Gabriel about whether or not he's a pedophile, and generally being a pest.

* {{Undercrank}}: Done repeatedly to reinforce the mood of bizarre surrealism, as people move around erratically.

A weekend of comic adventures ensues. The wacky plot incidents that occur over Zazie's madcap visit include: a horde of German groupies who chase after Gabriel, a comically ineffectual pedophile (really), a chase scene that's essentially a live-action Creator/TexAvery cartoon, and a bar brawl.

* SadistTeacher: DiscussedTrope, as Zazie says she wants to be a teacher specifically so she can be this. She proclaims that she'll jab her students in the butt with a compass and fill their mouths with chalk.