Le Signe du Lion

Key early new wave film, 1962, the first feature by Eric Rohmer
Opens with following individual characters, but not connecting them. Medium shots, with a few reframings, though quite still much of the time. The willingness to cut between shows an isolation. This pattern is then suddenly brought to shock the audience by a totally new angle on the same scene; often a heroic framing (though no heroes). Also note the eyeline matches, with some beautiful, classic new-wave fast film and dark exteriors, shots of the Paris skyline. This section is playful (Godard features), fun, slightly scattered, and introducing characters with appetites and a certain pathetic undertone.
The camera is extremely free when moved outside. The public are clearly watching the camera. Rohmer uses dialogue scenes with a mixture of largely twos here, though a few singles. Largely doesn’t opt for straightforward shot-reverse. Often one character continues talking even when off screen (as in ‘Ma Nuit Chez Maud’).
This clearly turns into a neorealist film, with minimal dialogue, indeed to an extent it is a social problem film. There are obvious echoes of De Sica. Many fixed camera shots where he comes into frame, then walks out. The music throughout is used as counterpoint, not for sentimentality. There is a real focus here on the small humiliations, the small details. It takes time over his predicament, making it a worthy document.
Due to the plot machinations the sting of the social critique us largely taken out, with it turning into a Michel Simon (‘Boudu’) impersonation. Perhaps this film is better read as not about the homeless at all. It is certainly a smart posing of moral questions. Of the hubris behind actions, of ways of coping.
This film is extremely pleasurable, in its bear-like central character, and air of ease and playfulness across the mis-en-scene. And, as said, poses interesting moral questions, even with its slightly questionable penultimate twist. It would be fair to say this deserves the name of a classic; a classic exemplar of the style that still stands as great cinema.