Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes

In this early narrative short by Jean Eustache, French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as Daniel, a ne’er-do-well who loafs around Paris with his friends in search of easy money and pretty women. Daniel believes a new job playing a street-greeting Santa Claus will provide him with golden opportunities to meet girls, but his own desperation continually stands in the way of success. By turns comic and melancholy, and filmed with Eustache’s signature black-and-white, documentary-style cinematography, SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES marks an important stepping stone among the director’s unsentimental explorations of awkward young men who avoid self-reflection in their pursuit of the opposite sex.