Included on 2-disc box set Early Short Films of the French New Wave.

Maurice Pialat may have grown up in the suburbs, but he has little love for them. In this poetic but critical essay, he turns his gaze to a range of post-war Paris suburbs: From the bourgeois plots of land where the “little” aesthetic dominates (“little house,” “little garden,” “nice little quiet life”), to massive new apartment blocks, and even shantytowns. And the film is prescient in drawing attention to class segregation and disparity of opportunity between those who live in Paris and in the towns that ring the metropolis.

Music by Georges Delerue.

Select Accolades

• Louis Lumière Prize 1961
  
• Venice Film Festival 1961