For some little time now we have been hearing and reading about the crop of rising young French directors but we have had little opportunity to see their work at firsthand. Signs of a change are in view with the arrival of François Truffaut's Les Mistons [The Mischief Makers]….

Based on a story by Maurice Pons, Les Mistons … recalls the activities of five young French boys on the threshold of adolescence as they move through a summer in which the magic circle of childhood is broken and they stumble hesitantly, unsurely, into the mysterious world of puberty. Baffled by a change they do not yet fully comprehend, the boys release their bewilderment over an awakening sensuality on a pair of young lovers, Gerard and Bernadette …, spying upon and tormenting the pair,… and releasing their ambivalent emotions by projecting their unfulfilled lusts onto the ripe young body of...