(1968; French) The third in the series of François Truffaut's films about Antoine Doinel (who is but isn't Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud) - which also include The 400 Blows, Love at Twenty, Bed and Board, and Love on the Run - begins with Antoine getting dishonorably discharged from the Army after three years of enlistment for "instability of character" and frequent AWOLs. Still wearing his uniform (his civilian clothes had been stolen), he goes to a brothel in Paris, before visiting his friends Lucien Darbon (Daniel Ceccaldi) and his wife, whose daughter Christine (Claude Jade) he'd left behind to join the military.

Eager to be of help, Lucien puts Antoine in touch with an acquaintance who offers the young man a job as a night clerk at Hotel Alsina. After Antoine permits a private detective with another man into a room where the other man's wife is in bed with the man from room 19, establishing proof of adultery, Antoine gets sacked. Nevertheless, Henri (Harry-Max), the private eye, brings Antoine into the Blady Detective Agency and teaches him the tricks of the trade; meanwhile, someone is stalking Christine.

The young couple goes to a magic performance from which Antoine suddenly leaves Christine alone to tail the magician, for whom a client (wearing a black glove on his left hand) has requested the agency obtain an address. Incompetent at shadowing subjects, Antoine receives an assignment to work as a stock boy in the shoe store of Georges Tabard (Michel Lonsdale), who has come to the agency complaining that "no one likes me."

On the Cinderella case, Antoine hears the salesgirls refer to Monsieur Tabard as "Monsieur Dinosaur"; he also becomes infatuated with Madame Fabienne Tabard (Delphine Seyrig). Experiencing every young man's fantasy of having an affair with an attractive older woman, Antoine becomes insensitive toward Christine, saying he feels a lack of admiration for her.

Invited upstairs into the Tabards' apartment, Antoine answers Monsieur Tabard's question as to his understanding of English, which he already knows Madame Tabard speaks fluently: "I'm learning from records, but it's not easy." Tabard retorts: "Records are a joke. There's only one way to learn: in bed with an English girl. It's time you learned. I learned with an Australian girl while her husband was at work painting houses." Madame Tabard interjects: "Like Hitler." Monsieur Tabard explodes: "Don't ever say Hitler was a housepainter. That's slander. Hitler painted landscapes."

Monsieur Tabard then realizes he's forgotten something downstairs and retreats to get it, leaving his wife and Antoine alone for coffee. As Antoine stirs the sugar into his cup, Fabienne goes to the phonograph, asking him if he likes music, to which Antoine replies, "Yes, sir," spills his cup, and bolts from the room, down the stairs, and out of the shop, saying he's ill.

After receiving a gift from Fabienne with a note of appreciation for his being tactful rather than polite, he sends her a farewell letter, which she answers by showing up at his apartment early the next morning. In the military he'd been trained that dismantling mines is much like treating broads - go slowly. Elsewhere he'd been advised that making love compensates for death - Mr Henri suddenly dies during a phone call - proof of one's existence.

A stranger approaches Christine as she sits on a bench beside Antoine, telling her he'll give her time to sever her temporary entanglements because, "I am definite."

Released a year after The Graduate (1967), whether intentionally or subconsciously, Truffaut's movie in may respects shares associations with Mike Nichols's romantic comedy, including lead male characters in their early 20s at loose ends with an uncertain relationship with a girlfriend, an affair with an attractive older woman, during the late '60s with an expressive sound track.

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