MY DVD Collection - 09 Feb 2007

(Die Unverschämten [de])

France 1957
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment (Region 2 fr)

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François Truffaut’s first commercial film "Les Mistons" marks a definitive turning point in French cinema history. By the mid to late 1950s, the French cinema industry had become regimented and standardised, stuck in a rut with its conformity, lack of diversity and over-reliance on star names. "Les Mistons" heralded a much needed return to the age of the free-thinking independent film directors of the past, when film-making had been an art, not just a shallow commercial exercise.
The critics on the review magazine Les Cahiers du cinèma (who included Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, amongst others) had been calling for revolution. Now they had it. This was the beginning of the New Wave. In "Les Mistons", a group of unruly schoolboys tear down a poster of Jean Delannoy’s film Chiens perdus sans collier. In the years that followed, this scene would come to symbolise what Truffaut and his New Wave allies (Godard, Rohmer, and others) would do to contemporary French cinema. Tear down the past and start afresh.
With financial backing from the wealthy father of his wife Madeleine Morgenstern, 25 year old François Truffaut, then a notorious film critic, was determined to make a film which demonstrated his view of what modern cinema should be about. An obsessive cinephile since his childhood, Truffaut new instinctively what would make good cinema and had a vision which focused on human relationships using believable characterisation and natural dialogue. With its strikingly neo-realist documentary style, "Les Mistons" shows clear references to the work of Jean Vigo and Jean Renoir, two directors whom Truffaut venerated.
The film contrasts the tenderness of a young couple who are very much in love with the unthinking malice of a group of young teenage boys (the "brats" or "mistons" of the film's title). Unable to make any sense of their attraction for the sensual young Bernadette, the boys decide to make her suffer and resort to increasingly cruel methods of spoiling her love affair with Gérard. It is a stunningly realistic portrait of male adolescence, in which Truffaut presumably draws on his own troubled experiences. Yet it is also, through its evocative location photography and simple narration, hauntingly poetic.

Les Quatre cents coups

(Sie küßten und sie schlugen ihn [de])

France 1959
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment (Region 2 de)

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Truffaut's first feature, and although not his best, infinitely better than the self-indulgent, increasingly compromised work he was turning out towards the end of his career. Revealing a complicity with downtrodden, neglected and rebellious adolescence that is intensely moving but never mawkish, shot on location in Paris with a casually vivid eye that is almost documentary, it still has an amazing freshness in its (quasi-autobiographical) account of 13-year-old Antoine Doinel's bleak odyssey through family life, reform school, and an escape whose precarious permanence is questioned by the final frozen image of the boy's face as he reaches the sea - freedom or point of no return? Still one of the cinema's most perceptive forays into childhood, and fun for spotting the guest appearances of such nouvelle vague luminaries as Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jacques Demy and (in the funfair scene) Truffaut himself.
— TM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Truffaut's assured camerawork never wavers in this highly influential and relevant film of adolescence. Successive, montage shots of children watching a puppet show emphasize their innocence, and sharply contrast with the disillusioned Antoine in jail, seemingly detaching himself from his inextricable situation by pulling his turtleneck over his nose. Fluid camera tracking pervade the film's exterior shots, reflecting the humor and vitality of youth. Note the lightly paced, overhead shot of the outdoor exercise scene, as the boys slowly splinter off in different directions until no one is left. In contrast, Antoine's flight from the reform school is slow and labored, reaching an uncertain conclusion. Ending with the infamous stop motion zoom of Antoine at the shoreline, he is at a proverbial crossroads: unable to keep running away, looking back at a familiar, hopeless fate.
— Acquarello
•••••
THE 400 BLOWS--an idiomatic French expression for the limit of what anyone can bear--is a nonjudgmental film about injustice, pain, and the events in a young boy's life that make him the person he is. Neither good nor bad, Antoine is treated with warmth and compassion by Truffaut as a child caught up in a maelstrom not of his own making. The grace and perfection of THE 400 BLOWS has made it the standard against which all films on the subject of youth are judged, and Leaud's portrayal that to which all young performers' are compared.
— TVGuide
•••••
Antoine Doinel became a composite of two compelling individuals, Truffaut and the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. Out of sixty boys who responded to an ad, the director chose the 14-year-old Léaud because “he deeply wanted that role . . . an anti-social loner on the brink of rebellion.” He encouraged the boy to use his own words rather than sticking to the script. The result fulfilled Truffaut’s avowed aim, “not to depict adolescence from the usual viewpoint of sentimental nostalgia, but . . . to show it as the painful experience that it is.”
Anticipating Truffaut’s later preoccupation with the emotional nuances of libidinal love, "The 400 Blows" is also a tale of sexual awakening: We see Antoine at his mother’s vanity table, toying with her perfume and eyelash curler; later he is fascinated by her legs as she removes her stockings. The stormy relationship of Antoine’s parents—a constant drama of infidelity, resentment, and reconciliation—foreshadows the romantic and marital tribulations of Antoine himself throughout the Doinel cycle, and offers compelling clues to decode the male protagonists of Truffaut’s films in general.
The last shot has been justly celebrated for its ambiguity. This brief but haunting release from the harrowing experiences that fill the movie brings Truffaut’s surrogate self in direct contact with his audience—an intimacy he was to pursue throughout his career. Truffaut’s zoom in to freeze-frame (more arresting in 1959, before this technique became a stock-in-trade of television commercials) provides a mirror image of an earlier shot in the police station. When Antoine is arrested for stealing a typewriter, he is fingerprinted and photographed for the files. The mug shot is in fact a freeze-frame that conveys the definitive and permanent way in which he has been caught.
That "The 400 Blows" is a record—even an exorcism—of personal experience is first alluded to in Antoine’s scribbling of self-justifying doggerel on the wall while being punished. On a larger scale, we can see the film as Truffaut’s poetic mark on the wall, or his attempt to even the score; by the last scene, the sea washes away Antoine’s footprints as the film “cleans the slate”—although that final image remains indelible.
— Annette Insdorf
•••••
"The 400 Blows", along with "Les Mistons" (1957), "The Wild Child" (1969) and "Small Change" (1976), represent one of the most tender and loving depictions of childhood in cinema. Truffaut's characteristic sensitive and non-sentimental view of his children characters denotes a respect for children living in a difficult world made by adults. It is a lyrical poetic realism that is central to two influential films for "The 400 Blows" - Vigo's "Zero for Conduct" (1933) and Rossellini's "Germany, Year Zero" (1947) - and significantly informs Truffaut's hypnotically moving debut feature. The 400 Blows (which could have been tellingly titled "The Awkward Age") is one of the rare few films that represents childhood and its turbulent knife-edge ambiguous emotions and situations in a searching, intimate and tender way communicating to us collective emotional truths. Truffaut focusing on his own childhood experiences - forging a "cinema in the first person singular" - is also speaking to us about our own childhood. This double emotional quality of the individual and the collective in the film is one of its more appealing simple qualities. As Rivette informs us in his Cahiers review of the film: "in speaking of himself, he seems to be speaking of us."
Crucially then, the haunting lyricism of "The 400 Blows" is based on Truffaut's Renoirian focus on the extraordinary features of his own "ordinary" childhood situations and individuals, and, characteristic of Truffaut's oeuvre, he never sacrificed the abstract for the individual. Truffaut (á la Renoir) discovered the superlatively gifted and unpredictable Léaud (whose presence in French New Wave Cinema is one of its numerous mesmerising qualities) for his debut fictional biography - and he became Truffaut's double in the Antoine Doinel films (the Doinel character being a rich synthesis of Truffaut himself and Léaud's own personality). Keeping in Renoir's spirit, Truffaut learned the lesson of valuing the actor over the character in a given film, and consequently, as the Antoine Doinel films progressed, Léaud's own personal characteristics and dialogue took over rather than strictly adhering to the script. "Stolen Kisses" in this context was the crucial film.
For me, the arresting concluding scenes of "The 400 Blows" are some of the most hauntingly personal scenes in all of French cinema. From the moment Antoine escapes from the reform school at a soccer game where he throws in the ball to play and then turns around and takes flight from the soccer ground, to one of the most famous freeze-frames in cinema's history where Antoine is located in the sea and turns around towards us, we are witnessing cinema as if for the first time.
Antoine's exhilarating run towards the sea to the accompaniment of Jean Constantin's achingly unforgettable, lush and finely modulated percussive film score (that we first encounter during the film's opening credit tracking shots of Paris' cityscapes) is one of ecstatic delight, in that it expresses Antoine's newly found freedom from the constraints of a non-caring adult world. Antoine is followed by Truffaut's lyrical camera (Henri Decaë) as he runs along a country road, ducking under a road sign, running towards the sea, towards an unknown future. Truffaut's camera, at a particularly moving moment, stands still and pans from right to left, taking in the desolate beach and the waves of the sea. Then, suddenly, we are behind Antoine as he faces the sea in the distant. This darkened full shot of the teenage protagonist suggests the underlying co-existing sadness and beauty in his life.
As Antoine flees, we hear his feet running along the country road: the sound has a hypnotic rhythm which expresses Antoine's sensuous delight in being free, a freedom rooted in the everydayness of his life and its simple pleasures. As Antoine descends a set of steps onto the beach we are already on the beach savouring the enchantment Antoine experiences as he rushes towards the sea. In the sea, Antoine's footsteps are erased suggesting a new beginning of self-affirmation. And when Antoine turns towards us, Truffaut's camera zooms in and freezes his face, forcing us to contemplate the lyrical dialectic and its paradoxical tension between the still of his face and the kinetic nature of the film medium itself, and forcing us, as Douchet suggests, to react morally concerning Antoine and his own world. This impulse of Truffaut's to capture and animate as his camera consummately freezes or tracks his characters recalls, as Annette Insdorf points out, the unmistakable texture of the romantic poet John Keats.
All in all, the fragile originality of "The 400 Blows" resides in Truffaut's passionate belief that cinema "is an indirect art.... it conceals as much as it reveals" and his Renoirian compassion for Antoine. As a unique bold masterpiece of the French New Wave, "The 400 Blows" is innovative in its excellent directorial touch and the awesome supple creativity that stamps each scene of the film with its casual and poetic use of reality as the main ingredient of the film. It tells us in simple compassionate terms a collective moral truth that we know in our bones but is often swept under the carpet of adult conformity - that a child entering adulthood amounts to a second painful birth. We care for Antoine, for most of us in some way have experienced the light and darkness of his childhood.
— John Conomos, Senses of Cinema 2000
•••••
Visuellement, "Les 400 coups" s'organise selon une élégante opposition binaire qui opère tout au long du film : dans les scènes en intérieur, le récit est composé de gros plans fixes, tandis qu'à l'extérieur les plans mobiles et éloignés dominent. Cette alternance confère au film son rythme puissant de tension et de détente. Prisonnier à l'intérieur, Antoine redevient enfant libre de vagabonder à l'extérieur. Le flot ininterrompu de désastres qui s'abattent sur lui à la maison, à l'école et au pénitencier est soudain endigué, suspendu. Au-dedans, madame Doinel crie, menace, punit; au dehors, elle restera muette et apeurée quand son fils la surprendra dans les bras de son amant.
En situant la première scène dans une salle d'école, Truffaut dénonce immédiatement l'échec d'une institution dont la fonction est de faciliter l'adaptation de l'enfant à la réalité sociale. Il met également en valeur les qualités d'initiative et de créativité d'Antoine dont le comportement tranche avec celui des autres enfants. La fatale photo de pin-up circule tranquillement dans la classe jusqu'à ce qu'elle tombe sur son bureau. D'une plume vengeresse, il agrémente son visage d'une moustache. Cette agression contre le féminin lui vaut d'être isolé, au coin, première représentation d'un espace carcéral qui ne fera que se rétrécir autour de lui. Loin d'y demeurer passif, il y compose illico un poème dont la fraîcheur autobiographique contraste avec cette sinistre caricature de la littérature qu'est "le lièvre", poésie recopiée par le maître sur le tableau noir.
— Anne Gillain : François Truffaut, le secret perdu

Les Quatre cents coups

(Sie küßten und sie schlugen ihn [de] • The 400 Blows [en])

France 1959
d: François Truffaut
Criterion (Region 0 us)

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Tirez sur le pianiste

(Schießen Sie auf den Pianisten [de])

France 1960
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment (Region 2 de)

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Truffaut's second feature is now recognised as one of the key films of the French nouvelle vague. Based (not too loosely, except in mood) on David Goodis' novel 'Down There', it's a strange pastiche of gangster movie, love story, and cabaret film, with a totally and calculatedly unpredictable plot about a lonely pianist with a past. The story is by turns comic and pathetic, often flashing midstream from one mood to the other, and Aznavour's performance as the wounded hero is a masterstroke of casting. In many ways fantastic, the film is paradoxically much more realistic than most in the way it uses both character and environment. Which is, after all, what the New Wave was about.
— RM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
In the spring of 1959, Truffaut was hard at work with Godard on an adaptation of Jacques Cousseau’s "Hot Weather", to star Bernadette Lafont. At the last minute, reckoning that neither French cinema nor the new wave needed yet another film about young love, he switched gears and turned to David Goodis’s 1956 novel "Down There", published in France as part of the Série noire collection. Goodis, whose novels have provided source material for filmmakers as disparate as Delmer Daves ("Dark Passage"), Jacques Tourneur ("Nightfall"), Jean-Jacques Beineix ("The Moon in the Gutter"), and Samuel Fuller ("Street of No Return"), was a favorite of Truffaut’s. He found in Goodis a singular mixture of the hard-boiled, the romantic, and the fantastic. “At a certain point,” Truffaut said of Goodis’s books, “they go beyond the usual gangster story and become fairy tales.” Truffaut was also enchanted by the fact that no matter what transpires in the stories—murder, kidnapping, suicide—“the men speak only of women, and the women speak only of men.” Truffaut’s idea was to marry Goodis to the stop-start rhythms of the comic novelist Raymond Queneau, creating a film that was “practically a musical.” This unusual idea caused him no small headache during the editing, due less to confusion than to nervousness at trying to pull off something so new.
Truffaut said that it was a single image from Goodis’s novel—the car silently approaching the house in the snow, where Saroyan’s crazy brothers are holed up—that sparked him to make the film, and Truffaut and cinematographer Raoul Coutard do indeed give the image a very special kind of quaintly miniaturized beauty. But I have a feeling that it was the image of Aznavour himself in the lead, complemented by the heartbreakingly beautiful Claudine Huzé (Truffaut gave her the stage name Marie Dubois) as the devoted and doomed Léna, that turned all the lights green for him. In Aznavour, he saw a countenance that recalled Saint Francis. But it’s a sure bet that he also saw what his friends recognized right away—a face and a charmingly reserved manner that recalled his own. Somehow, the mixture of shyness and confidence in the figure of the forlorn piano player provides us with a perfect mirror for Truffaut himself, whose films are so rich, vibrant, and eminently enjoyable that one is continually caught off guard by the realization of their complexity, their bravery, and their emotional depths.
— Kent Jones
•••••
Le film se présente comme un parcours du noir vers le blanc, de la nuit des premières scènes vers la maison dans la neige ; comme une ascension des profondeurs de la cave, où se tapit Charlie après sa bataille avec Plyne, vers la luminosité éblouissante des montagnes.
Le film est, avant tout, un voyage vers le passé, un retour vers les origines, vers l'enfance de Charlie ; mais ce retour est aussi le retour du refoulé, retour de la violence de l'enfance à laquelle le héros avait cru pouvoir échapper en quittant jadis ses frères.
Construit autour d'un long flash-back qui occupe un tiers du film, le récit se joue sur la répétition d'un temps cyclique. A l'histoire de Charlie, Léna et Plyne répond, dans le passé, celle d'Edouard, Thérésa et Lars Schmeel. Dans les deux cas, le désir d'un autre homme vient détruire l'harmonie du couple. Dans les deux cas, la mort de la femme ponctue le dénouement du drame. Par sa construction narrative, le récit élude la possibilité d'une progression linéaire, d'une résolution qui ne soit pas une répétition.
Le film dans son ensemble manifeste une crainte fondamentale envers le féminin. A l'exception du passant rencontré par Chico, qui a réussi à surmonter son ambivalence et à trouver le bonheur dans le mariage (il évoque, au seuil du récit, un idéal irréalisable), le film présente une galerie d'hommes incapables de vivre harmonieusement leur rapport avec la femme. Les gangsters et les frères du pianiste ont des fixations libidinales infantiles. Lars Schmeel et Plyne convoitent des femmes qu'ils ne peuvent pas avoir. La menace représentée par le corps féminin, qui, par un retour classique de la fiction, se transforme en menace contre le corps de la femme, se manifeste dans un réseau d'images, les barreaux derrière lesquels se profile souvent sa silhouette. Lorsque Charlie montera pour la première fois chez Léna, la caméra offrira un gros plan des jambes de la jeune femme filmées à travers les rampes de l'escalier. Les allées et venues de Clarisse sur le palier qui mène à la chambre seront filmées selon le même dispositif. Lors de leur première promenade, Léna et Charlie, poursuivis par les gangsters, se réfugieront derrière la haute grille dont les barreaux jettent en premier plan leur ombre sur le couple et quand Léna viendra rejoindre le pianiste dans la maison sous la neige, il l'apercevra à travers les grilles de la fenêtre. Ces images qui représentent une des constantes de l'oeuvre de Truffaut, consacrent l'union du désir et de l'interdit.
— Ciné-club de Caën

Jules et Jim

(Jules und Jim [de] • Jules and Jim [en])

France 1962
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment / mk2 (Region 2 de)

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Truffaut's third film may not look the masterpiece it seemed 40-odd years ago, but it remains one of his most enjoyable movies. Taken from Henri-Pierre Roché's novel, it details a ménage à trois between two young bohemian poets and a beautiful older woman in Paris before WWI, tracing it through war, separation, marriage and tragedy. Moreau is Catherine, variously described by the German Jules (Werner) and the French Jim (Serre) as 'a force of nature', 'a queen', 'a cataclysm'. She embodies the life force (and the death force), but to herself she's torn between being 'a happy fool or a sad fool'. A strangely successful mélange of nostalgic period style and New Wave innovation, the film alternates, like its characters, at breakneck speed between tristesse and joie de vivre. But for some reason the characters, though rhapsodised, never come truly alive. That it remains moving is due to Truffaut's efforts to embrace the emotional contradictions his characters experience, and to his stress on the importance of action to stay pain.
— WH, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Truffaut uses the recurrent theme of cycles throughout the film (as in Anatole Litvak's "Goodbye Again"). Jules habitually turns an hourglass at his apartment in order to set his bedtime. There is a scene where the camera pans around the bistro, beginning and ending with the two friends talking. Catherine is constantly changing hats, and assumes a different personality with each one. Bicycle trips feature prominently in several scenes, and involve Catherine's lovers. Lastly, note the structure and lyrics of Catherine's song, which allude to her pattern of indiscretions, separations, and reconciliations with Jules. Similar to Claude Sautet's "Un Coeur en Hiver", the cyclical theme represents a love triangle. However, it also symbolizes a vicious circle - Catherine's self-destructive "whirlpool" - of extramarital affairs, emotional vacillation, and cruelty to the people who love her. It is a desperate, hopelessly impossible situation that entraps, rather than liberates. Jules and Jim is a deeply profound film about the devastating consequences of indecision on three people... and a nation.
— Acquarello
•••••
Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that the greatest art is about the passing of time. Jules and Jim flies by like a dream, suffused with a sense of life’s evanescence. As the characters grow older, and perhaps wiser, we become aware of how much has been lost—loss of love, loss of innocence, loss of the marvelously lamplit Bohemian past to the searchlight horror of Nazism. An intimate melancholy pervades the movie’s voice-over narration, which adores the characters’ brave inquiry into love’s possibilities but is also wryly aware of the relief that accompanies the end of such inquiries. As critic Andrew Sarris once wrote, "Jules and Jim" celebrates “the sweet pain of the impossible and the magnificent failure of an ideal.”
Truffaut was not yet thirty when he made this film, and decades later it’s still astonishing that one so young could be so open-hearted, so willing to give everyone’s motives and passions their due. But if "Jules and Jim" casts a mature eye on the limits of freedom (by the end, everything seems uncannily, but satisfyingly, preordained), it remains indelibly a young man’s movie. It’s a lyrical joyride propelled by leaping, elliptical edits, Georges Delerue’s sublimely evocative score (one of the most memorable in film history), and Raoul Coutard’s ecstatic photography, which helps underscore Truffaut’s visual ideas about the great circle of life. At one point, Coutard’s camera follows a young woman in a bar, does a 360-degree pan, and winds up watching Jules draw another girl’s face on the surface of a round table.
Almost every scene is shot through with such casual stylistic brilliance. Yet what audiences have always loved about this movie isn’t simply its technical brio but its emotional warmth, its embrace of a world in which tragedy is forever playing hopscotch with farce. "Jules and Jim" is a movie that enters viewers’ lives like a lover—a masterpiece you can really get a crush on.
— John Powers

Antoine et Colette

(Antoine und Colette [de])

France 1962
d: François Truffaut
mk2 (Region 2 fr)

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Antoine et Colette

(Antoine und Colette [de])

France 1962
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment (Region 2 de)

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La Peau douce

(Die süße Haut [de] )

France / Portugal 1964
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment / mk2 (Region 2 de)

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A superb tragi-comedy of adultery in which a middle-aged intellectual ducking out from under a demanding wife tries to turn a casual affair with an air hostess into the love of his life, but succeeds only in triggering a calamitous crime passionel. Wry, disenchanted, directed with an astonishingly acute eye for the disruptions of modern urban living (the film is punctuated by gears changing in cars, lights being switched on and off), it is rather as though the airily fantastic triangle of Jules and Jim had been subjected to a cold douche of reality. Between the two films, Truffaut had been preparing his book on Hitchcock, and the lesson of the master, evident in the rigour of Truffaut's direction, is even more pleasingly applied in the irony whereby the hero's chosen mistress turns out to be a cool, teasingly uninvolved blonde, while all the passion lurks in the dark wife's libido.
— TM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Truffaut's film is so splendidly alive with observed details, translating the inner workings of Pierre's fumbling psyche into visual terms. To single out one memorable example: after his first encounter with Nicole in the elevator, Pierre walks down the hotel hallway, gazing down at the shoes placed outside every door – a man's here, a woman's there, or, tantalizingly, a man and a woman's side by side. On entering his room, Pierre automatically turns on the light in the foyer. Then he turns it off. Emboldened, he enters his bedroom and sits on the bed. He turns on the lamp beside it, phones Nicole's room and asks her to meet him for a drink. Nicole reminds him of the lateness of the hour and demurs. Pierre apologises and politely hangs up. Moments later, Nicole calls him back and agrees to meet him the following afternoon. Now that the staged ambience of his darkened room is superfluous, Pierre walks around his suite flipping on all the lights before lying down on his bed.
Jean Desailly is perfect as the fumbling husband. Truffaut is gentle enough in his portrayal to show us Pierre's genuine enthusiasm for literature. Françoise Dorléac, Catherine Deneuve's sister, is captivating as Nicole, exhibiting many of the qualities in her performance – sensuality, and a remarkable range of emotions – that were considered lacking in her sister. And Nelly Benedetti is so convincing as the betrayed wife, and so tragically passionate by turns, that one wonders what could've driven Pierre to stray in the first place. The spareness and delicacy of Raoul Coutard's cinematography are matched by Georges Delerue's music, used by Truffaut with extreme care and precision – never blatant or over-emphatic.
"La Peau douce" was first shown at Cannes in 1964. Jacques Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" received all the attention, winning both the Prix Louis Delluc Prize and the Palm d'Or. Truffaut's film is no less dazzling, but it represented a radical departure for the director. After the daring stylistic accomplishments of "Tirez sur la pianiste" and "Jules et Jim" (1961), "La Peau douce" at first seemed a step back for Truffaut, a step all the way back to the films of Henri-Georges Clouzot or Henri Cayatte. That Truffaut had been busy with his Hitchcock book at the time is considered to be one explanation for this change in style – perhaps also because of the film's concentration on the coolly functional details of the world which the characters inhabit rather complacently. The difference is that Truffaut's concentration is never as emotionless or clinical as Hitchcock's. It is manifestly clear in frame after frame of this carefully wrought film that Truffaut cares about his characters, even as the mechanised world they inhabit conspires to destroy them. It makes watching Pierre's fall all the more fascinating and sad.
— Dan Harper, Senses of Cinema March 2004
•••••
The other factor which, so to speak, “cuts across” the rapid narrational progress, giving certain moments a sudden access of emotional depth, is Georges Delerue's music which tends to swell up in sudden, intensely romantic bursts. Against the bustling modernity of air travel and car trips, it seems archaic, the direct expression of Balzac expert Lachenay's sensibility. "La Peau Douce" might, as Truffaut said, present an antipoetic idea of love, but the love scenes themselves have a decidedly poetic intensity, thanks in no small part to Delerue's score coupled with the beautifully controlled tension of anticipation and release that charaterises them. The image of an enraptured Lachenay caressing Nicole's thighs as she lies exhausted on the holiday cottage bed immediately after their arrival is particularly powerful. The balance between anticipation and release, between a world of bland efficiency and the profound feelings that collide with it, is reflected in the cinematography. The film's settings might be, on the whole, banal and even drab, especially in contrast to those in Jules et Jim, but Raoul Coutard's photography imbues them with a controlled, wintry luminosity that is memorably atmospheric, suggestive of the emotions smouldering beneath reality's increasingly porous crust. The discreet but palpable beauty Coutard is able to conjure forth from such lacklustre surroundings without significantly altering them places "La Peau Douce" among his greatest achievements.
The sense in which "La Peau Douce" is, as Truffaut claimed, very much a “polemical reply” to "Jules et Jim" is in its refusal to idealise “freedom”. In the earlier film love really did become a “poetic idea” which the heroes attempted to live up to. Even if their effort ended in tragedy, it was nothing short of a brave attempt at social revolution on a microcosmic level. Jules et Jim is a celebration of the joy of possibility, a fact reflected in its freewheeling cinematic style. The idea of love in "La Peau Douce" is purely personal and, as contemporary critics were not slow to point out, bourgeois: the sad, selfish infatuation of an older man with a younger woman who soon loses interest. Its trajectory is despairing in that the only possibilities on offer are tragic. Rather than freedom, it shows this type of love as a binding, destructive obsession. Small wonder it failed on its release and has since been overshadowed by its sunnier, if decidedly inferior, predecessor. Yet there is a compelling desperation about La Peau Douce that gives its moments of hope or intimacy a piercingly moving intensity, while the briskness of its pace never allows it to wallow in abjection. Perhaps the one word that best describes not only "La Peau Douce" but each of Truffaut's finest – though not always most highly regarded – films from "The 400 Blows" (1959) through "Two English Girls" to "The Man Who Loved Women" (1977) is one that he once used to define the cinema of Nicholas Ray: “hurt”.
— Maximilian Le Cain, Senses of Cinema June 2004

La Peau douce

(Die süße Haut [de] • The Soft Skin [en])

France / Portugal 1964
d: François Truffaut
Fox Lorber (Region 0 us)

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Fahrenheit 451

(Fahrenheit 451 [de])

UK 1966
d: François Truffaut
Universal Pictures Video (Region 2 de)

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An underrated film, perhaps because it is less science fiction than a tale of 'once upon a time'. Where Ray Bradbury's novel posited a strange, terrifyingly mechanised society which has banned books in the interests of material well-being, Truffaut presents a cosy world not so very different from our own, with television a universal father-figure pouring out reassuring messages, and the only element of menace a fire-engine tearing down the road. A bright, gleaming childhood red, the engine is like a reminder of toyhood days; and as Werner's fireman hero goes about his task of destroying literature, his growing awareness of the almost human way in which books curl up and die in the flames gradually assumes the dimensions of a quest for a legendary lost treasure - movingly glimpsed as he slowly and painfully deciphers the title-page of David Copperfield. Here the rich, nostalgic pull of the past wins out over technocracy, and the film ends, as it began, with a scene lifted right out of time: a wonderful shot of the rebels - each dedicated to the preservation of a literary masterpiece by committing it to memory - wandering in contented, idyllic exile by the edge of a glitteringly icy lake.
— TM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
"Sur le scénario, Fahrenheit 451 était un film dure et violent, animé de bons sentiments et plutôt grave. En le tournant, je me suis rendu compte que j'étais tenter de lui donner de la légèreté et cela m'a amené à le traiter d'un peu loin et à regarder l'avenir comme j'ai regardé le passé dans Jules et Jim : sans forcer la main au public, sans le contraindre à trop y croire.
Si je recommençais le film à zéro, je dirais au décorateur, au costumier et à l'opérateur, en guise d'instruction : faisons un film sur la vie comme la voient les enfants : les pompiers seront des soldats de plomb, la caserne un superbe jouet etc. Je voudrais que Fahrenheit 451 ne ressemble ni à un film yougoslave, ni à un film de gauche américain. Je voudrais qu'il demeure modeste malgré son grand sujet, un film simple."
— Ciné-club de Caën

La Mariée était en noir

(Die Braut trug schwarz [de] • The Bride Wore Black [en])

France / Italy 1968
d: François Truffaut
MGM/UA Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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Truffaut has stated that this elegant detective thriller, based (like his "Mississippi Mermaid") on a novel by Cornell Woolrich, was an attempt to reconcile his two cinematic idols, Alfred Hitchcock and Jean Renoir. It's about Julie Kohler (Moreau), whose husband is inexplicably shot dead on the church steps after their wedding. Truffaut follows Julie's systematic and deadly revenge with a light, idyllic style as she ruthlessly hunts and kills her victims (by methods which include pushing the first over a balcony, poisoning the next, and suffocating the third). Perhaps the mixture of crime fiction and Renoir never quite jells, but it's all highly entertaining, and Hitchcock buffs will enjoy picking out the many echoes (of "Marnie" especially).
— DP, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
THE BRIDE WORE BLACK is always referred to as Truffaut's most "Hitchockian" film, an intentional homage to his idol about whom he had recently published a landmark interview book. And while it is true that the film contains numerous Hitchcockian elements (Bernard Herrmann's throbbing score; several lengthy, subjective POV tracking shots; recurring images of money, suitcases, and trains, a la PSYCHO, MARNIE and NORTH BY NORTHWEST), Truffaut maintained that the film was also a tribute to his other acknowledged mentor, Jean Renoir. This can be discerned in the many touches of dark Gallic humor with which the chauvinistic male characters are depicted, and the way in which sympathy is gradually engendered for Julie as well as her victims, invoking Renoir's famous line that "Everybody has their reasons." Thus, beneath the plot, there is a fascinating aesthetic dialectic going on between the dual influences of Hitchcock and Renoir, typified by the musical duel between Herrmann's suspenseful score and the lyrical Vivaldi interpolations, and the fact that all of the violence is stylized and takes place mostly off screen.
The film is certainly Hitchockian in its rigorous, methodical structure, as the implacable, dispassionate Julie moves from one murder to the next like an inexorable black widow, but its themes and the attitudes expressed by the men towards women are wholly French. Making numerous alterations to Cornell Woolrich's original novel (including revealing Julie's motive in the middle instead of the end with a series of alternate-angle VERTIGO-like flashbacks, and having her successfully kill the correct men, unlike in the novel where she kills the wrong ones), the film is most distinctively Truffautesque in the way that the men are all portrayed as misogynistic skirt chasers who are destroyed by their uncontrollable impulses. As Morane says, their only common interests were "women and hunting" and Julie exploits their individual weaknesses and infatuations to lure them to their deaths. It's an enjoyable and entertaining film, albeit probably Truffaut's darkest and least sentimental work, with the disturbing underlying message that all men are pigs, a sentiment that likely owes more to Woolrich than Truffaut.
— TVGuide

Baisers volés

(Geraubte Küsse [de] )

France 1968
d: François Truffaut
mk2 / Warner Home Vidéo France (Region 2 fr)

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A persuasively charming comedy (the third instalment of the Antoine Doinel saga), in which Léaud wanders into a job as a private detective and falls hopelessly and idealistically in love with a client's wife. The film is comprised of several flawlessly observed episodes, and Paris has never looked so nice or its inhabitants so whimsically attractive. Dedicated to Henri Langlois, the head of the Paris Cinémathèque who was nearly sacked by De Gaulle, it was made at the time of the political upheavals of 1968 in which Truffaut was directly involved. But the film itself betrays an amazing serenity in such troubled times, transforming the anxiety and pain into a sad lyricism.
— DP, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
"Baisers volés" is a slight and affectionate little film with nothing revolutionary to offer in its form or content, but with a splendid performance from Léaud (capturing just the right note of adolescent blundering tentativeness and insouciance) and a whole mass of brilliant humorous and affectionate detail, such as the slow track up to the wrong bedroom when Antoine and Christine (Claude Jade) are making love, or the tender scene of Antoine’s proposal.
— Roy Armes: French Cinema
•••••
The mood in "Stolen Kisses" is lighter and more festive, which reminds us once more that the French at their most felicitous are still the most civilized observers of the obsessiveness of love. Paris may no longer be the ooh-la-la capital of the world, but somewhere in its streets the idealism of love still shines—at least in the slyly sentimental world of François Truffaut, that poet of love’s sweet pain and excruciating embarrassments. ...
Amid all his careful calculations designed to suggest careless rapture, Truffaut did let loose in genuinely privileged moments worthy of Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo. The scene, for example, in which the delicate task of mine detection is described as a military metaphor for the equally delicate seduction of a woman might have amused Renoir as an unveiling of the French psyche. Yet, though Truffaut retains his romantic preference for the elective affinities, he redeems all sexuality, even the most sordid, as an affirmation of the life force. Hence, when a sort of father figure to Antoine is buried, the distraught young man goes straight from the funeral to a streetwalker, almost as if the transition from the morbid to the sordid were prescribed as part of a religious ritual. ...
Gradually, one obsession piles upon another until all Paris seems drenched with desire. Antonie’s brightest moment of civilized acceptance comes quite sweetly with the spectacular entrance of Delphine Seyrig’s not-too-married woman, a model of taste and discretion with perhaps a dash of too much make-up and mannerism and literary sensibility, but delectably accessible nonetheless, in a warm-hearted way Seyrig never quite explored in the icy realms of "Last Year at Marienbad" and "Muriel". Finally, we are confronted with one last madman, a persistent pursuer of Antoine’s at last compliant Christine. The madman walks up to the two lovers in a park, and speaks bitterly of his all-consuming love for Christine. The camera stays on the backs of the two lovers looking full-face at the madman. The shot is held long enough for the viewer to feel Antoine’s hairline in the back of his neck tingling with embarrassed identification. The madman departs. Antoine and Christine rise from the bench. “He’s crazy,” Christine exclaims. “Yes, he is,” Antoine answers noddingly, with that quiet, almost reverent serenity on his face that signifies to us that we are all crazy, that all love is crazy. Crazy and divine. Truffaut, like Antoine, then and always, was a fool for love.
— Andrew Sarris
•••••
The improvisatory approach also allowed Truffaut enough free time to participate in the Langlois Affair, which coincided with the film's production. In February 1968, delegates of the Ministry of Culture fired Henri Langlois from his post as the director of the Cinémathèque Français and replaced him with Pierre Barbin, an official in the Gaullist government. Langlois founded the Cinémathèque in 1936 with Georges Franju in order to screen a wide variety of films to French audiences. During the 1940s and 1950s, it served as the primary educational venue for the young critics/filmmakers who would later comprise the New Wave (including Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette) and the group recognised Langlois as a father figure. Upon Langlois' dismissal (for alleged administrative inefficiencies), Truffaut organised a wide-reaching boycott of the Cinémathèque and encouraged filmmakers to refuse permission for the institution to screen their films. Over the next two months, demonstrations continued and support for Langlois arrived from a host of internationally recognised figures such as Jean Renoir, Charles Chaplin and Nicholas Ray. On April 22, a special meeting of the Cinémathèque's board convened and Langlois was reinstated. Throughout the production of Baisers volés, the crew developed the following slogan; “If Baisers volés is a good film, it'll be because of Henri Langlois, and if it's bad, it'll be because of Barbin”.
Perhaps the least political of the New Wave filmmakers, Truffaut became outraged by the incident not only out of loyalty to Langlois, but also because he recognised in it the government's attempt to suppress the arts. As Truffaut admitted later, “I rather tend to reject life and take refuge in the cinema, so when the cinema is attacked, I must defend it”. Similarly, the Antoine of "Baisers volés" takes refuge in an unattainable, idealised dream world of human relations. For example, while in the army, he writes Christine 19 letters in one week, but becomes upset when she does not reply to each one. Upon meeting Mme. Tabard for the first time, he describes her in an agency report as an “apparition” to which a secretary replies, “We want a report – not a declaration of love!” His longing for perfection necessarily isolates him from other people, ironically leaving him further from his goal. In one of the film's funniest moments, Antoine goes on a date with a “tall girl” to compensate for an argument with the “normal” Christine. In a long shot worthy of Chaplin, the couple walks away from the camera while Antoine routinely cranes his head up toward his date, who is at least six inches taller than him.
Throughout "Baisers volés", Antoine encounters a variety of compromised adult relationships, implying that concession or conciliation, rather than idealisation, defines maturity. Mme. Tabard, for example, considers a relationship with Antoine as a result of her passionless marriage. M. Tabard (Michel Lonsdale) describes his life as perfect and happy, save for the fact that everyone hates him. When Antoine runs into former girlfriend Colette (Marie-France Pisier) on the street, her dour husband (François Adam) and infant child unenthusiastically accompany her. Finally, even prostitutes carry no degree of certainty. When Antoine hires one upon discharge from the army, she refuses to kiss him, mess up her hair or remove her sweater. Don Allen describes Antoine's travails as “a yearning for truths in a world of compromise”.
— Mike Robins, Senses of Cinema March 2004
•••••
Le film s'organise selon une ligne directrice souple que Truffaut définit en ces termes : En vérité, dans "Baisers volés", chaque spectateur amenait son sujet, pour les une c'était l'Education sentimentale, pour les autres l'initiation, d'autres encore pensaient à des aventures picaresques. Chacun apportait ce qu'il voulait, mais il est vrai que c'était dedans. On avait bourré le film de toutes sortes de choses liées au thème que Balzac appelle "Un début dans la vie".
"Baisers volés" suit en effet le schéma classique du récit d'apprentissage : un jeune homme, sortant de l'armée pour entrer dans la vie, passe par diverses phases initiatiques et s'intègre, à la fin du film, à l'ordre social par le mariage. C'est d'ailleurs le seul film de Truffaut qui se termine par la formation d'un couple selon le modèle traditionnel du cinéma américain. Il y a pourtant une série d'os dans la version truffaldienne de ce scénario. Pour commencer le jeune homme ne sort pas de l'armée mais il en est chassé et, pour finir, alors qu'il vient tout juste de proposer le mariage à la jeune fille, un fou surgit pour le traiter d'imposteur. Entre tempe intervient une série d'épisodes qui méritent un examen attentif car, si Truffaut reprend des schémas classiques de la fiction, il les agrémente du piment de la subversion. ...
L'interdit que faisait peser sur le cinéma le plan du générique se déplace sur le héros : la caméra va en effet le cueillir, après un panoramique sur Paris, derrière les grilles d'une sombre prison. Mais c'est pour mieux l'en sortir aussitôt. Truffaut cinéaste défie les interdits et son film va s'envoler, comme Antoine, à la recherche du temps perdu. Ce mouvement nostalgique épouse celui du désir le plus explicitement sexuel. Lorsqu'il sort de prison, les autres détenus demandent à Antoine d'aller "baiser" pour eux à cinq heures pile. On le voit traverser à toute allure la place Clichy pour s'acquitter de sa mission. Du bordel, Antoine filera chez Christine, le mouvement est lancé, il ne s'arrêtera pas avant la fin du film, le grand lieu du désir étant bien sur l'agence de détective de monsieur Blady où Antoine rencontrera Fabienne Tabard. Alors initié, il pourra susciter le désir de Christine. Mais, au matin, Antoine abandonne le pur mouvement du désir pour une pratique plus socialisée de l'amour. On voit d'abord Antoine et Christine prendre le petit déjeuner après la nuit qu'ils ont passé ensemble. Dans cette scène apparaît l'écriture, malgré la proximité du couple. Les deux jeunes gens échangent en silence de petits billets, et on comprend qu'Antoine demande ainsi Christine en mariage. Avec l'écriture intervient la menace d'une castration symbolique que le film a constamment détournée.
C'est donc très logiquement que le fou interviendra au terme du récit pour dénoncer l'imposture du jeune Doinel. Déclarant à Christine qu'il ne la quittera jamais et ne vivra que pour elle, le fou est l'image même du désir sauvage et illimité de la relation duelle qui exclut le passage vers un monde gouverné par la loi des pères, c'est à dire vers le monde sociabilisé des adultes. Truffaut disait de cette scène : "avec les années qui passent, je crois que cette dernière scène de Baisers volés, qui a été faite avec beaucoup d'innocence sans savoir moi-même ce qu'elle voulait dire, devient comme une clef pour presque toutes les histoires que je raconte."
— Anne Gillain : François Truffaut, le secret perdu

Baisers volés

(Geraubte Küsse [de])

France 1968
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment (Region 2 de)

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La Sirène du Mississippi

(Das Geheimnis der falschen Braut [de] • Mississippi Mermaid [en])

France / Italy 1969
d: François Truffaut
MGM/UA Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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Belmondo, owner of a cigarette factory on the African island of Réunion, advertises for a wife, gets Deneuve (who isn't what she seems), falls in love, and finds himself embroiled in a succession of crises and suspicions. Derived from Cornell Woolrich's novel Waltz into Darkness (a title that effectively matches at least one aspect of the film), this belongs to the group of Truffaut films that includes "The Bride Wore Black" and "A Gorgeous Bird Like Me"; it's an elaborate, low-key thriller-fantasy that strains and modifies, comments on and fondly sends up pulp fiction, while taking pulp fiction's more mythic elements as its base. Gags multiply. And at the film's centre, remaining firmly in the mind, is Belmondo's Louis, ensnared, almost ensnaring himself and loving it, the victim of recurring nightmares in the Clinique Heurtebise.
— VG, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
This is Truffaut's most successful attempt to blend a complex, Hitchcockian genre film with his own personality. It was also his first chance to work with superstars, ensuring success at the box office. The film is full of references to cinema--a clip from LA MARSEILLAISE (the picture is dedicated to Jean Renoir, whose film LA CARROSSE D'OR [THE GOLDEN COACH] was the inspiration for the name of Truffaut's production company), and homages to Humphrey Bogart, Nick Ray, Honore de Balzac, Jean Cocteau, and a Cahiers Du Cinema editor who bore the same name as this film's detective, Comolli.
— TVGuide
•••••
In this most colorful, suspenseful, "escapist"-American?-of Truffaut's films, Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a wealthy industrialist living on the island of La Réunion (the locale changed from the New Orleans of the Cornell Woolrich novel on which it is based). He orders a bride by mail and receives, instead, Catherine Deneuve and a flimsy but acceptable explanation. The imposter soon absconds with his bank account, drawing him into a drama of missing persons and murder, and finally, a love that precludes all regret and fear of death. "[The] framework is pure film noir material but the sentiments it contains are worthy of Jean Renoir, to whom the film is dedicated...It is pervaded by the spirit of Renoir, not only because of its similarity with "Nana" and "La Chienne", but more importantly because it investigates the bond between a man and a woman against the background of the full range of human experience..."
— James Monaco

L'Enfant sauvage

(Der Wolfsjunge [de] • The Wild Child [en])

France 1970
d: François Truffaut
MGM/UA Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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The story, based on fact, of a late 18th century behavioural scientist's attempts to condition a wild boy found in the woods in the ways of 'civilisation'. The confrontation of Rousseau's noble savage with Western scientific rationalism makes for a film with enormous philosophical implications: emotional subjectivity versus scientific objectivity, nature versus nurture, society versus the individual. Given the semi-documentary treatment and the subject itself, the film could have been excruciatingly dull in lesser hands. In fact it's as lucid and wryly witty a film as you could wish for, uncluttered by superfluous period detail. A beautiful use of simple techniques - black-and-white photography, Vivaldi music, even devices as outmoded as the iris - give it a very refreshing quality. The use of much voice-over from Dr Itard's original journals, set against images patently contradicting the scientist's detached assumptions, make for some pretty ironies, and fundamentally question the morality of much scientific investigation, as well as attempting to evaluate the worth of many of our social constructs (such as education). A deeply moving film, dedicated to Jean-Pierre Léaud, the actor who plays Truffaut's semi-autobiographical hero, Antoine Doinel.
— RM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
"L'enfant sauvage" est le film des premières fois. Cet enfant a grandi à l'écart de la civilisation, si bien que tout ce qu'il fait dans le film, il le fait pour la première fois. C'est aussi la première fois que Truffaut joue dans un de ses films, marquant un renversement dans le jeu des identifications : "Jusqu'à L'Enfant sauvage, quand j'avais eu des enfants dans mes films, je m'identifiais à eux et là, pour la première fois, je mes suis identifié à l'adulte, au père." Ainsi, alors que "Les 400 coups" étaient dédié à Bazin dont Truffaut fut l'enfant sauvage, ce film est dédié à Jean-Pierre Léaud, hommage de Truffaut à son acteur favori dont il fut, comme Itard pour Victor, le pédagogue : "Pendant que je tournais le film, je revivais un peu le tournage des "400 coups" pendant lequel, j'initiais Jean-Pierre Léaud au cinéma. ". Ce film marque également la première collaboration entre Truffaut et Nestor Almendros qui travaillera sur huit autres films du cinéaste. Dans son livre, "L'Homme à la caméra", Almendros souligne que "L'Enfant sauvage" est un hommage à la photo des films muets. Chaque image de L'Enfant sauvage reflète la beauté de ce premier regard du cinéma sur le monde que vient connoter dans le film l'usage régulier d'une ponctuation en iris.
Dès le premier plan, une ouverture en iris vient isoler sur l'écran noir une paysanne dans la forêt. C'est par un regard féminin que l'existence de l'enfant sauvage est révélée ; on le suivra un long moment jusqu'à ce qu'il s'installe entre les branches d'un arbre pour se balancer d'un lent mouvement d'avant en arrière. La caméra s'éloigne alors en zoom avec une fermeture à l'iris. L'auto bercement du sauvage à la fin de ce segment est caractéristique des jeunes autistes. L'enfant qui n'a pas connu sa mère, devient lui-même la mère qui berce. De ce fait il perd son identité. Se substituant à la mère, Le docteur Itard va ainsi redonner une identité, une individualité à son fils adoptif.
— Anne Gillain : François Truffaut, le secret perdu

Domicile conjugal

(Tisch und Bett [de])

France / Italy 1970
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment (Region 2 de)

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For those who found Truffaut's later work becoming flaccid, this fourth instalment in the continuing saga of Antoine Doinel provides plenty of critical ammunition. The early years of marriage for Truffaut's quasi-autobiographical character involve estrangement from his wife, an affair with a Japanese mistress (ending in long silences and cramp in the legs for Doinel), reunion with his wife, fatherhood, and acceptance of his lot. Truffaut takes immense pains to keep his characters interesting, scenes being built around elaborate (and often very funny) sight gags and running jokes, but ultimately they only serve to remind us what a pompous and self-regarding bore Doinel has become. Funny enough, if that's all you want.
— RM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Cinematographer Nestor Almendros said, “Bed and Board is probably the least aesthetically pleasing of the films I have made for Truffaut.” But the movie has the same sad, drifting tone as its hero. Almendros’ camera work (while always elegant) has a casual, improvisational feel that perfectly matches the deceptively comic tone of the film. When Antoine first meets Kyoko, amidst a group of Japanese businessmen, the camera irises in first on her and then on him. The device indicates both connection and isolation. Similarly, Antoine and Christine are often framed at a distance from one another. At home the geography is such that they often chat through two separate windows. Most conversation is had on the move, Lubitsch-style, walking in and out of rooms. Their reconciliation, the film’s most emotional scene, takes place over the phone.
It’s difficult to think of anything Jean-Pierre Léaud does here as a performance. After all, he owns the character. His Antoine is sly and subversive, cold and frustratingly passive. He practically floats through the film. Léaud/Doinel never makes any real decisions, preferring to let life happen to him. It’s Kyoko who instigates the affair. When Antoine goes to the brothel, he becomes uncomfortable with the necessity of having to choose one girl over another. This maddening inability to act makes us so badly want to reach out to him. It’s been four movies and we’ve lived too long with Antoine not to demand that he shape up. We want to both shake him and save him. And we resent that we feel so sorry for him. His relationships are all about comfort, but once he gets comfortable he has to destroy it. Antoine’s assignations with the “exotic” Kyoko are presented as a series of dinners where he grimaces from having to sit cross-legged on the floor.
“Once a picture is finished it is sadder than I meant it to be,” Truffaut once wrote. And although Antoine ultimately returns to Christine, the ending of the movie is notably un-romantic. The joke is that they’ve become the typical married couple. The future of the relationship is more telling in an earlier scene between Antoine and Christine just after they’ve broken up. He’s been by to visit their son, Alphonse, and he walks her through the now dark and empty courtyard to a cab. She lashes out at him for the first time: “All you know is what you want. A kiss when you want it! Solitude when you want it! I’m not ‘yours on command.’ Not anymore.” He laments how unhappy he’ll be until he can finish his novel. He then declares: “You are my sister, my daughter, my mother.” Christine replies simply, “I’d hoped to be your wife.” Antoine’s trouble is that he can’t tell the difference. She feels sorry for him and invites him to a movie. “No, I’ll just go for a walk,” he says. As her taxi drives away, he goes directly to a brothel.
— Noah Baumbach
•••••
S: You've told me you don't like the music in "Bed and Board". Why didn't you replace it?
T: Had I made the film for United Artists, I would have thrown it out and reused the music from "Stolen Kisses", but since the two films were made for different companies, I couldn't do that. Anyway, once the music was recorded, there isn't much you can do. You can discard what you don't like, repeat certain phrases, not much more. The music is what it is in "Bed and Board" because Albert Duhamel, the composer--I say this without laughing at him--is one of those artists who believes that since the May Revolution of 1968, art can never again be what it was.
S: But the music is secondhand Darius Milhaud!
T: No. Stravinsky.
— Francois Truffaut, Paris, September 1 & 3, 1970

Les Deux anglaises et le continent

(Zwei Mädchen aus Wales und die Liebe zum Kontinent [de] )

France 1971
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment / mk2 (Region 2 de)

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One of Truffaut's most tantalising romances, a discreet ménage à trois involving a French writer of the belle époque and two sisters living on the romantic Welsh coast. It's a tale of art born from emotional sacrifice as - all in love with one another and reluctant to cause hurt - the three withdraw from any final conflict or consummation of their feelings. As such, it's as much about what doesn't happen as about what does, and the form employed by Truffaut and Henri Pierre Roché's source novel (he also wrote Jules et Jim) - a literary narration - is thus entirely appropriate to the film's detached, gently nostalgic mood. Concerned not so much with feelings as with feelings about feelings, the film is simultaneously introspective and passionate, a perfect complement to the artistic era it portrays. Originally released in both Britain and America in a cut version.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Le système du film est destiné à immobiliser le désir, à en paralyser la circulation. Ce blocage se fait de la façon la plus économique possible : il suffit de deux femmes, de deux sœurs dont chacune reprendra tour à tour en charge l'interdit maternel. Muriel séparera Claude d'Anne puis, aussitôt après, Anne fera office de barrière entre Claude et Muriel. Truffaut disait avoir voulu dans ce film "presser l'amour comme un citron". C'est dire que l'amour est amer.
Après sa chute, on retrouve Claude en train de descendre l'escalier de la maison sur des béquilles. Une domestique passe à ses côtés pour monter en courant. Au masculin castré répond un féminin mobile et rapide, à la descente, l'ascension poursuivant le motif sexuel.
Claude rentre seul dans le salon où il rencontre pour la première fois Anne Brown, fille d'une amie d'enfance de madame Roc. Celle-ci les rejoindra et proposera à Anne d'apprendre l'anglais à Claude. L'anglais, peut-être parce qu'il n'a n'arriva jamais à le parler, est toujours chez Truffaut le langage du désir. Car le désir surgit avec Anne Brown. Lorsqu'elle relève sa voilette, elle dévoile sans crainte son regard. Ce geste, qui annonce par contraste le sévère bandeau sur les yeux de Muriel, ressemble à une invite amoureuse. Au moment où Anne révèle son désir intervient pour la première fois en voix off le commentaire de Truffaut : "lorsque la jeune Anglaise releva sa voilette, Claude eut l'impression d'une nudité pudique et charmante". La proximité promise par l'image est annulée par la distanciation imposée par le texte.
La scène suivante confirme ce schéma d'élan et de répression généré par la voix du narrateur. Claude et Anne visitent un musée. Alors qu'ils sont entourés des statues de femmes nues de Maillol, Anne encourage le jeune homme à abandonner sa canne : "Claude, je suis sûre que vous n'avez plus besoin de ça." Il la lui remet et monte sans soutien quelques marches. La nudité des corps féminins, les marches gravies, l'effacement des marques de la chute, tout suggère ici une libération de la tutelle maternelle. Pourtant, accompagnée d'un commentaire en voix off, Anne a aussi présenté à Claude dans cette scène la photo de Muriel petite fille. Au sein d'un mouvement vers le monde adulte surgit l'indice de l'enfance ; à la chaleur immédiate du corps d'Anne s'oppose la vision d'une femme qu'elle voue au désir de Claude. Comme dans Jules et Jim, la Sirène du Mississippi ou La nuit américaine, la femme idéale est celle dont on perçoit le reflet avant d'en rencontrer la réalité charnelle. Le mécanisme est amorcé qui condamne le héros à la quête d'un objet absent. La place du désir sera toujours celle d'un manque. Cette photo de Muriel réapparaîtra dans les derniers instants du récit pour consacrer l'échec de cette quête
Claude, ayant retrouvé ses ailes, vole vers la liberté dans les plans suivants. Une locomotive l'emporte en Angleterre chez les sœurs Brown. La voix du narrateur déclare : "La mère de Claude ne fit aucune objection à ce voyage". Mais, en surimpression de l'image du train, apparaît à cet instant même le visage grave de madame Roc qui paraît freiner l'élan vers cet envol.
Le film se déroule alors comme un jeu hallucinant de répétitions. Pris dans un jeu de miroirs, Claude vit son histoire dans une série de scènes parallèles où les sœurs évoluent comme deux ombres et jouent le scénario maternel de l'interdit. Deux scènes dans le jardin : la première avec sa mère qui lui parle de peinture ; la seconde avec Anne qui l'entretient de sculpture. Sa mère lui reprochera d'écrire à Muriel ; Anne dira à Muriel sa surprise de le voir envoyer un colis à Claude. Mrs Brown cachera à Claude la présence d'Anne à Paris, Anne celle de Muriel. Il y aura deux séductions dans l'atelier d'Anne (la sienne et celle de sa sœur) ; deux déflorations (Anne et Muriel) ; deux séparations (Claude et Anne se quittants sur l'île ; Muriel et Claude à Calais) ; deux morts (madame Roc et Anne). Le voyage de Diurka vers la maison des Brown reprendra même celui de Claude au début du film.
Dans ce film où les personnages se déplacent sans cesse ; rien ne bouge ; tout stagne. Loin d'être désuet, le sujet des Deux Anglaises touche au cœur même du développement nécessaire de tout être humain : celui de la symbolisation du désir dont le récit nous offre la face négative. Ce sujet, clairement énoncé dès le prologue, fait toute la matière du film. Cette répétition à l'identique confère au film sa force poignante que souligne la belle musique lyrique de George Delerue
L'épilogue du film est un des passages les plus forts de l'œuvre de Truffaut. "Quinze années ont passé comme un souffle" : Mrs Brown est morte et Muriel, mariée au Pays de Galles, a eu une fille. Claude se promène dans le jardin du musée Rodin et contemple les statues du grand sculpteur. Un groupe de petites collégiennes anglaises courent en riant à ses côtés...Et si l'une d'elle était la fille de Muriel ? Un travelling circulaire fait le tour de la statue de Rodin, le Baiser. Claude s'approche d'un taxi pour le prendre. Il n'est pas libre ; le chauffeur attend quelqu'un. Claude s'écarte mais aperçoit dans la vitre de la voiture son image. Il murmure "Mais, qu'est-ce que j'ai ?.. J'ai l'air vieux aujourd'hui". Il se dirige vers la sortie et disparaît, entouré des petites anglaises, derrière les portes entrouvertes du parc
L'image de Claude dans la vitre du taxi consacre de façon pathétique l'échec de la formation d'un couple adulte. Vieil enfant, il contemple son reflet aliéné, étranger, que le temps a défiguré à son insu. Ce taxi ne l'emportera plus nulle part. Dans un film où les moyens de locomotion -bicyclettes, trains, voitures- interviennent sans cesse pour figurer les mouvements impatients du désir, ce taxi dont l'usage lui est interdit marque la fin du voyage. Chassé de ce grand jardin dont l'image, sous des formes diverses, a ponctué le récit, marquant chaque fois la promesse d'un renouveau, Claude disparaît derrière de lourdes portes qui figurent le seuil ultime de la vie. On a rarement réuni en si peu d'images tant de signes de l'exclusion, de finitude et de mort.
L'expérience est une lanterne aveugle, elle n'éclaire pas ceux qui la vivent. Elle pourra peut-être servir à ceux qui la regardent, comme l'espérait Claude au début de son récit.
— Anne Gillain : François Truffaut, le secret perdu

La Nuit américaine

(Die amerikanische Nacht [de] • Day for Night [en])

France / Italy 1973
d: François Truffaut
Warner Home Video (Region 2 de)

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One of Truffaut's most captivating sentimental comedies, built around his obvious love for cinematic illusionism. What story there is concerns the various emotional upsets, logistical difficulties, and moments of sheer elation during the shooting of a rather silly-looking feature called "Meet Pamela". Basically it's all just an excuse for a marvellous series of delicately observed gags about how things are really done behind the scenes on a film set: grande dame Cortese infuriates everyone by forgetting her lines, a cat awkwardly refuses to drink its milk, Léaud throws adolescent fits every few hours. Coupled with Georges Delerue's uplifting score and some superb performances (none more so than the director himself), it's a must for anyone besotten with the glamorous trivialities of the cinematic medium.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
“In 'La Nuit Américaine' I tried to have ten characters of equal importance: the prop man and script-girl count for as much as the stars” insisted Truffaut, and this bears out well. The closest thing the film has to a femme fatale is Liliane, played by the anonymous Dani, who occupies the lowliest of roles in the film: assistant script trainee. But it is Joëlle who intrigues the most. Her single-minded dedication to the film-within-the-film above all else, as evidenced by her line, “I could drop a guy for a film, but I would never drop a film for a guy”, makes her the most laudable character. Her view of her work as art, and the lengths she goes to maintain the stability of the shoot, far beyond her call of duty as script girl, are further evidence of this – and unforgettable is the scene where Joëlle is sought for consultation on the script by the director Ferrand, whereby the script girl transcends her role and becomes something of a higher authority on the cinema. While possessing an extreme dedication to her work on the film, Joëlle nevertheless does not take the step of ascribing greater importance to film than to life itself. ...
Finally, Alphonse pronounces his prognostication, reproduced at the beginning of this article. Despite its unerring similarity to the writings of the young Truffaut, the viewpoint it expressed was definitely not shared by the contemporaneous Truffaut, who had by then disowned much of his youthful criticism, particularly the type of bombastic proclamation such as that also reproduced at the head of the article. This cannot, however, be merely ascribed to Truffaut's own conservative evolution, for the prospect of such a break as outlined by Alphonse – that is, a similar one to that which occurred with the release of "Les Quatre Cent Coups" and "A Bout de Souffle" (Godard, 1959) – was, at the time of the film under consideration, all but extinguished, in France at least, if not globally. The flowering of groundbreaking cinema in the 1960s was by this point in the process of drying up in a prelude to the severe aridity of the 1980s. Now, however, in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, the clarion call for a cinema “shot in the streets without stars or scripts” appears startlingly applicable.
Perhaps where "La Nuit Américaine" can be seen to be most successful is precisely in its ambivalence: it is no more nor less than a truthful reflection of Truffaut's own state of mind. In his quest to try to find the right balance between making a cinema that is both intellectually challenging and wildly popular, there exists the ever-present danger of slipping too far to one side or the other. Despite the insistence of many critics that Truffaut spent most of his career alternating between films that emphasised the one over the other, it is my opinion that by this stage of his life (from the late 1960s until his death) Truffaut had unmistakably taken the road of popular acceptance, especially in the seemingly unending number of literary Verfilmungen. Happily, and what possibly gives this particular film such a fond place in my mind, "La Nuit Américaine" was a genuine attempt to steer the ship somewhat in the opposite direction, without making too radical a departure from Truffaut's general canon.
— Danny Fairfax, Senses of Cinema 2005

L'Histoire d'Adèle H.

(Die Geschichte der Adèle H. [de] • The Story of Adele H [en])

France 1975
d: François Truffaut
MGM/UA Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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Truffaut's film follows the course of Adèle Hugo (Adjani), the daughter of Victor Hugo, as she travels from Guernsey to Nova Scotia, and finally to Barbados, in search of a man who clearly doesn't love her. The film is a disaster because, in place of the self-conscious reflection of her predicament conveyed by Adèle's journal (on which the film is based), Truffaut opts for the Hollywood formula of hapless unrequited love. The result is a movie that centres on a woman's weakness, rather than on the strength necessary to put into practice her considered decisions.
— PH, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
One of Truffaut's most complex films, a love story that shows only one half of an affair, THE STORY OF ADELE H. combines the fascination with obsessive women that fills his films (Catherine from JULES AND JIM, Julie Kohler from THE BRIDE WORE BLACK, Camille Bliss from SUCH A GORGEOUS KID LIKE ME) with his love of books, diaries and the process of writing (FAHRENHEIT 451 and THE WILD CHILD). The true story of Adele Hugo is already engrossing; unable to live up to her father's expectations, she thought she could not fill the void in his heart after his favorite daughter, Leopoldine, drowned. Truffaut's disturbing film on the subject is as difficult to walk away from as it is to watch.
— TVGuide
•••••
By the time STORY OF ADELE H. concludes, Truffaut has placed Adele’s predicament in a political perspective: he defines the nature of the culture and society that has structured Adele’s situation, that has oppressed her. In previous films Truffaut indicated that he regards certain dates as having some sort of historical significance. In both JULES AND JIM and TWO ENGLISH GIRLS the World War 1 period is seen as a cultural watershed. In JULES AND JIM the tone of the film drastically shifts away from lyricismt. The war, somber music, ominous cars, book burnings in Germany, deaths of Jim and Catherine are signs of negative historical development. In TWO ENGLISH GIRLS the film concludes with a somber epilogue that is set just after the first world war. Anne is dead, and Muriel has disappeared from our view. Claude senses that he is old, that joy is passing out of life, that a culture which was once radical is waning. This epiphany occurs while he is attending an exhibition of sculpture. Now he recognizes that neither Rodin nor Balzac is now a revolutionary figure; they have been accepted by the establishment as public figures of respectability. It is also significant, as we have noted, that Adele Hugo dies in this period, the war again being a point of demarcation.
Although Truffaut’s signs are primarily implicit and superstructural, there is a correlation between the negative dates in his symbolic time scheme and what may be viewed as the beginning of the postwar, decadent, imperialist epoch. In THE STORY OF ADELE H. Truffaut’s symbolic history is especially clear. The film begins in 1863 and concludes in 1915. We are told by the narrator that 1863 is the period of the war against slavery in the United States. Adele’s father, Victor Hugo, is not only the major French romantic literary figure of the century. Truffaut lets us know that Hugo supported the revolutions of 1848 and that he fought for the abolition of slavery in the U.S. and Latin America. During most of the action of the film, Victor Hugo is in political exile because of his defense of the French Republic. In a documentary epilogue that concludes the film Truffaut sketches Hugo’s triumphant return to Paris in 1870, lists the political honors awarded the poet by the new Republic, and shows us a procession of two million people honoring Hugo after his death in 1885.
Truffaut indicates to us that Hugo’s literary romanticism is an aspect of his bourgeois democratic world view. He clearly defines Hugo as a leader of the romantic cultural revolution, and as an active leader of the continuing bourgeois democratic revolutions of the nineteenth century. In Halifax, Adele is in contact with a doctor and a bookseller. Both discover her identity, and speak of her father’s literary achievements. Later, after Adele goes to the Barbados, an ex-slave recognizes her and writes to Victor Hugo as “a friend of the oppressed.” Adele is then brought back to her father in Europe by a black woman who was once a slave.
Because Victor Hugo’s links with the struggles of the oppressed and exploited are highlighted by Truffaut, we experience a shock of recognition. The daughter of an abolitionist and leader of the bourgeois democratic revolution is herself not free. The gains of the bourgeois revolution (abolition of slavery, formal democratic rights in legal and cultural spheres, formal equality in the pursuit of happiness) have not been extended to its daughters.
Near the end of the film Truffaut informs us that Victor Hugo’s last words were: “I see a black light.”
Truffaut gives us this information in context of the disclosure that Adele lived the remainder of her life in a mental clinic, withdrawn from the society that broke her spirit. The “black light” in part is a sign of Hugo’s personal (patriarchal) failure. The democratic revolutions to which he devoted his life did not encompass the cultural, political or economic liberation of women.
— Michael Klein, Jump Cut, no. 10-11, 1976, pp. 13-15
•••••
La tentative folle et suicidaire d'une jeune fille de construire par l'écriture un lien vers un père dont elle se sent rejetée.
Le seul trait commun entre la pâle fantoche qu'est Pinson et le grand Victor Hugo est que ni l'un ni l'autre ne veulent d'elle. Adèle court après le fantôme d'un père auquel elle a retiré toute réalité pour ne conserver que le trait qui l'a détruite: l'absence d'amour. En lui préférant sa soeur, Victor Hugo a aliéné l'identité de sa fille cadette. Si le titre du film occulte son patronyme, ce n'est pas tant pour laisser planer un mystère sur l'identité d'Adèle, que pour refléter ce manque fondamental d'identité. Le seul ressort dramatique du film va être de montrer comment l'imagination fertile d'Adèle va lui permettre de survivre dans cette situation intenable. Quand la folie aura gagnée, il s'arrêtera.
Peu de scènes sont reliées entre elles par un lien de cause à effet ou par une quelconque continuité temporelle. De nombreux fondus au noir viennent au contraire isoler les séquences les unes aux autres. Le temps ne passe pas; il se répète. Sur les 73 segments du film, vingt huit se passent la nuit; dix neuf sont muets et onze n'ont pour seul accompagnement sonore que le texte du journal ou des lettres d'Adèle. Cette triple absence d'enchaînement temporel, de lumière et de dialogues vient suspendre le cours de la logique diurne pour soumettre le déroulement du récit aux courts circuits de l'imaginaire.
Séquence remarquable : Pinson et Adèle s'éloignent d'une soirée dansante et se dirigent vers un cimetière où il lui dit qu'il ne l'épousera jamais. Puis une scène montre la jeune femme en larmes devant un petit autel sur lequel trône une photo de Pinson encadrée de noir et de bougies. L'amour est devenu culte religieux d'un objet défunt. Pourtant, sur ce cérémonial du désespoir, s'enchaîne une somptueuse mise en scène: on voit un gros plan du visage d'Adèle qui annonce son mariage a ses parents, tandis qu'en surimpression se dessinent les côtes de l'Océan que sa lettre va traverser. On suivra les parcours de celle-ci grâce à une suite de fondus enchaînés sur les cartes de l'Amérique, des vues de l'Atlantique, une carte d'Europe où se détache le nom de Guernesey et, finalement, une grande maison qui est celle de Victor Hugo. Une vieille femme en noir en sort, une lettre à la main, poursuivant le motif du deuil, et va au siège du journal de Guernesey pour y faire publier l'annonce du mariage. La musique accompagne à la fois la scène du rituel funèbre et celle du voyage de la lettre, marquant le lien qui unit l'idée de mort à ce passage lyrique. Car ce merveilleux épisode, s'il marque le triomphe d'Adèle pour imposer sa parole au monde et donner force de vérité à son fantasme consacre aussi sa rupture avec le réel. On voit d'abord le lieutenant Pinson se faire tancer vertement par son supérieur. Puis, aussitôt après, ce sera Adèle que la voix paternelle condamnera et accusera de mensonge.
— Anne Gillain : François Truffaut, le secret perdu

L'Argent de poche

(Taschengeld [de] • Small Change [en])

France 1976
d: François Truffaut
MGM/UA Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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L'Homme qui aimait les femmes

(Der Mann, der die Frauen liebte [de] • The Man Who Loved Women [en])

France 1977
d: François Truffaut
MGM/UA Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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La Chambre verte

(Das grüne Zimmer [de])

France 1978
d: François Truffaut
Arte TV (Region 0 de)

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Adapted from two Henry James short stories, "The Green Room" stars Truffaut himself as an ageing provincial journalist on a failing periodical, solitary despite his housekeeper and (inexplicably) deaf-mute child, as he looks back from the late 1920s at the two traumas that have shaped his life - the massacre of World War I in which he lost most of his friends and acquaintances, and the death of his beloved wife. A story full of Gothic promise. The similar binding of personal and historical events, of obsessively remembered love and morbid longing for death, were elements that pulsed vitally - if sentimentally - in the earlier "Jules et Jim". And the failure of "Chambre Verte" is technically all too simple. Truffaut's lack of range as an actor is not helped by the script's purple prose. But one suspects the real problems to be much larger: the human face in this film has become clouded and curiously vague - neither direct enough to stand for itself (as it did in the earlier films), nor sufficiently eloquent to carry as much metaphysical baggage as the script implies. Truffaut has made more than his share of maverick and self-critical films; his later retreat into period pieces and production values becomes all the more regrettable.
— CA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
A strong departure from the polished, beautifully constructed imagery of the Truffaut films photographed by Raoul Coutard (specifically, "Jules and Jim" [1961] and "The Soft Skin" [1964]), cinematographer Nestor Almendros uses an unnatural color palette that is washed and pale to set the thematic tone of the film. The opening war footages, filmed in black and white and processed with blue tint, appear raw and garishly monochromatic. Julien's house, including the commemorative green room, appears dark, harsh, and uninviting in tepid, sickly colors. Julien is pale, unremarkable, and dour. The effect is brooding and somber, a reflection of Julien's morbid preoccupation and his inability to find joy in living. ...
"The Green Room" is an uncharacteristic departure for this stylistic auteur: a dark, devastating portrait of a man consumed by such profound grief that he is incapable of experiencing the beauty and joy of life. It is also a highly ambitious and provocative film, not only about a man's self-destructive myopic obsession with loss and mortality, but also about paying homage to the people who have affected his life and are forever lost to him. The admission that Truffaut's life has been altered by the indelible images that surround him is a gesture of profound reverence, and not of vanity. After all, one can presume that Truffaut's beloved mentor, André Bazin, has a prominent place in his own ethereal altar of the dead. Inevitably, Julien is transfigured by the love of life, a literal moving image, a metaphor for Truffaut's passion for the cinema. The film concludes with the lighting of the temple's final candle, in celebration of Truffaut's realized passion, his own liebestodic rapture.
— Acquarello, Senses of Cinema 2000
•••••
Pour Anne Gillain : " Comme Adèle H., La chambre verte est construit sur le principe de "l'émotion par répétition" : "Je crois à l'émotion retenue, à l'émotion non par paroxysme mais par accumulation. Je voudrais que l'on regarde La chambre verte la bouche ouverte, qu'on aille d'étonnement en étonnement, et que l'émotion ne nous étreigne qu'à la fin, grâce au seul lyrisme de la musique de Jaubert" (le cinéma selon Truffaut p325 et 376).
Davenne est, comme Adèle H., la proie d'une idée fixe que chaque scène reprend sous un angle différent : "le film repose sur l'idée classique de faire quelque chose avec presque rien" Si la musique de Jaubert a joué un rôle essentiel dans la structuration du récit, c'est qu'il répond au principe d'une composition musicale. La chambre verte joue une suite de variations sur un thème unique.
Ce film est, dans l'œuvre de Truffaut, celui qui va le plus loin dans le sens de l'économie. A court d'argent, Davenne ira faire une série de conférences en Scandinavie ; seul un plan flash des roues d'une locomotive représente ce voyage. A l'exception de quatre scènes isolées, toute l'action se déroule dans cinq lieux : la maison de Davenne ; les bureaux du globe, le journal où il travaille ; la salle des ventes où il rencontre Cécilia ; le cimetière ; la chapelle. L'ensemble du film a d'ailleurs été tourné dans le même cadre, comme l'explique Nestor Almendros : "La chambre verte a été pratiquement filmé dans une seule maison louée à Honfleur. Des artifices de décoration nous permirent d'utiliser le même lieu pour des décors différents."
Un seul escalier a ainsi servi pour celui de Davenne, de Cécilia et du globe ; le bureau du journal est situé dans les combles de la maison et le cimetière dans son jardin. Econome d'actions et de lieux, la chambre verte l'est aussi de lumière. Sur 47 scènes, seules 14 sont explicitement tournées de jour, 17 se passent la nuit et les 16 autres sont situés en intérieur avec des lampes éclairées qui suggèrent le soir. Plus encore que Adèle H., La chambre verte se dérobe à la logique diurne pour faire triompher les lois impérieuses d'un monde intérieur.
Pourtant, à la différence d'Adèle, qui se révèle sans cesse au spectateur à travers les folles déclarations de son journal, Davenne ne se confie pas. Le récit le saisit du dehors et ce sont ses actions qui reflètent son obsession. Plusieurs scènes se terminent sur le regard stupéfait que jettent sur lui les personnages du film ; Cécilia à la salle des ventes ; Imbert, son patron, au Globe ; un employé de journal qui l'observe à la dérobée tandis qu'il compose la notice nécrologique de Massigny. Ces regards galvanisés par la surprise sont ceux que Truffaut veut provoquer chez le public. Le récit interdit la complicité avec le héros. Davenne est un homme narrativement seul.
Les premières images dévoilent de façon indirecte et silencieuse le paysage intérieur qu'il habite. Le générique de La chambre verte est parmi les plus beaux de Truffaut. Les cartons défilent sur des plans aux tons monochromes bleutés de la Première Guerre mondiale montrant des soldats lancés à l'assaut, courant vers l'ennemi ou fauchés par les balles. Par trois fois le visage en gros plan de Davenne, mal rasé et coiffé d'un casque vient se surimposer à la vision de cette hécatombe. Son regard fixe annonce sa déclaration future : "je suis devenu simplement le sectateur de la vie". Davenne s'est coupé d'un monde qui a suivi son cours avec "l'après-guerre" ; il demeure hanté par les images d'un carnage insoutenable qui a marqué la fin d'une époque et où sont mort, comme il le dira, tous ses amis. En substituant une teinte bleue au noir et blanc des plans documentaires, Truffaut leur retire tout caractère réaliste pour leur conférer une valeur subjective. Davenne vit dans un paysage intérieur d'outre-tombe.
"La chambre verte" suit la confrontation de deux temps, celui de Davenne qui vit dans un état de demi-folie qui le coupe de la réalité. Ses souvenirs sont déformés par le combat perdu d'avance qu'il mène contre la durée : en refusant le travail nécessaire du deuil, il se livre à celui de la mort. Cécilia, à l'inverse du parti pris violent de Davenne, accepte le passage du temps : "Je crois fermement que l'oubli est nécessaire", lui dira-t-elle. Tout le fil est structuré par ce contraste qui reflète le conflit entre le héros et la jeune femme.
Cette confrontation prend la forme d'un contraste stylistique. Le récit ouvre sur la veillée funèbre de la femme de Mazet où Davenne chasse tous les assistants et surtout le prêtre. La scène suivante le montre à la recherche d'une bague ayant appartenu à sa femme, dans la salle des ventes où il rencontre Cécilia. La première scène comporte 36 plans ; la seconde un plan séquence unique. Dans ce film où les plans sont rares - 458 pour l'ensemble du récit- des passages très découpés où dominent les plans fixes alternent avec des plans séquences filmés en travelling. Parmi ceux-ci, le plus beau sera le long plan de l'enterrement de Massigny, où la caméra parcourant le cimetière ira lentement trouver Cécilia qui sanglote dissimulée sous un voile, dans un coin isolé.
Les plans séquences sont ainsi toujours associés à la jeune femme. Ils sont la seule manifestation de continuité dans un film qui est composé de scènes disjointes, séparées par des fondus aux noir qui les isolent. Rien ne lie, par exemple les deux premières scènes, et on ne sait jamais combien de temps s'écoule entre des fragments d'actions qu'unissent rarement des liens de causalité narrative. Les scènes se succèdent comme des instants immobiles dont l'ordre pourrait être modifié.
La scène qui succède aux deux première complète l'exposition du sujet et annonce son dénouement. Davenne rentré chez lui s'enferme dans son bureau avec Georges, l'enfant sourd-muet, pour lui montrer des plaques sur une lanterne magique. Il présente d'abord des images d'insectes, puis celles de soldats morts pendant la guerre. Au cours de la projection, l'enfant répétera avec ses mots confus et indistincts la description fournie par Davenne de ce spectacle horrible. L'association de ces images et d'un langage désarticulé traduit de façon poignante la faillite de l'humain dans ce désastre collectif. La scène poursuit le motif du générique comme le feront de nombreuses allusions à la guerre dans le récit : invalide poussé dans un fauteuil roulant, infirmes, palques commémoratives. La guerre a laissé partout les marques de son passage et Davenne, avec son corps intact, porte dans son esprit les traces de cette mutilation. Mais dans cette scène, le cinéma est aussi explicitement associé au souvenir des disparus. Lorsqu'il parlait à Mazet, Davenne allait éteindre une petite lampe pour ne laisser briller que la lumière des bougies. Pour regarder les plaques, Georges éteint lui aussi l'électricité. La pénombre d'une veillée funèbre se confond dans ce simple geste avec celle des salles obscures. Le culte des morts est inséparable de celui du cinéma
Dans les trois histoires de Henry James (L'autel des morts, la bête dans la jungle, les amis des amis) qui ont inspiré le récit de Truffaut, il n'y avait pas d'enfant. Dans La chambre verte, Gorges est, comme le remarquait Truffaut, "une réplique de Julien Davenne". Il joue un rôle analogue à celui du fils de la concierge dans Le dernier métro. Georges, puni par Davenne pour avoir cassé une plaque, se sauvera la nuit. Il descendra subrepticement l'escalier de la maison, comme le fera le héros à la fin du film pour rejoindre Cécilia à la chapelle. On le retrouvera dans une rue obscure où il brisera d'un coup de pierre la vitrine d'un magasin pour saisir le mannequin d'une femme au visage entouré de boucles. Au moment où il s'en empare, le bras d'un agent de police s'abat sur son épaule. Cécilia viendra le sortir de prison. Cette séquence, la seule dont les séquences soient bien enchaînées dans ce film fragmenté, reproduit la quête de Davenne : briser la séparation entre deux ordres d'expériences, la vie et la mort, le présent et le passé, le spectateur et le spectacle, pour s'emparer de la mère morte contre la loi du père. Le lieu obscur et profond où l'on enferme l'enfant évoque les lieux de délinquance que l'on retrouve souvent dans les films de Truffaut : la cellule d'Antoine Doinel, la cave de Luca Steiner. Mais l'aventure du petit Georges reprend aussi le rêve de La nuit américaine où Ferrand se voyait, enfant, allant voler la nuit les photos de Citizen Kane, Rosebud, la mère perdue. Dans la première version de La chambre verte (qui s'appelait alors La disparue) Truffaut nommait le héros Ferrand, comme son metteur en scène, lui aussi sourd comme Georges. Chez Truffaut, le jeu des analogies est interminable.
— Ciné-club de Caën

L'Amour en fuite

(Liebe auf der Flucht [de])

France 1979
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment (Region 2 de)

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Fifth and final instalment in the saga of Truffaut's narcissistic hero, Antoine Doinel, who hardly seems to have matured at all in this piece of whimsy. Encounter follows encounter in (ho hum) picaresque fashion, while Antoine remains bewildered at the vicissitudes of both women and life. There are welcome moments of irony and some sharply handled scenes, but they don't succeed in lifting the film above the most self-indulgent level of sentimentality.
— HM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
The logic of the four earlier Doinel films suggest that if Antoine is an eternal child, always seeking a replacement for his mother in the women he chases, it’s because his real mother robbed him of his childhood. For the first time in the series, "Love on the Run" acknowledges that (in Lucien’s words) “the faults were not entirely theirs.” The logic Truffaut asks us to believe in, if only for this film, is this: when he accepts his mother’s love, Antoine can stop running.
The Draguignan subplot, which at first seems to have little connection with the rest of "Love on the Run", pushes the theme of the theft of childhood to an extreme while hinting at those areas of experience that must be skirted around if the Doinel saga is to reach its happy ending. Colette has been given the opportunity to defend a man who, persuaded that his three-year-old son wasn’t his own, beat the child to death. By taking the case, Colette (who has an emotional stake in it, as a parent who lost a child) performs, in Antoine’s case, a symbolic act of forgiveness. ...
It’s easy to imagine a continuation of the Doinel series in which Antoine returns to his old tricks. Truffaut admitted: “I would be lying if I said Antoine Doinel succeeded in his transformation into an adult. He has not become a real adult, he is someone who has remained a child. There is a lot of childhood left in all men, but with him, it’s even more so.” The sense of the difficulty of a real assumption of adulthood gives "Love on the Run" an undercurrent of anguish, despite its surface lightness. Added to that is the melancholy of saying goodbye not just to Antoine Doinel but to the two momentous decades of French cinema he has come to represent. Léaud felt the sadness of this separation acutely. In a 2001 interview, he remembered the shooting of Love on the Run as a painful experience. “Personally, I would have never renounced or stopped Doinel,” Léaud said. “In any case, he is part of history.”
— Chris Fujiwara

Le Dernier métro

(Die letzte Metro [de])

France 1980
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment / mk2 (Region 2 de)

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La Femme d'à côté

(Die Frau nebenan [de])

France 1981
d: François Truffaut
Concorde Home Entertainment / mk2 (Region 2 de)

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For all the period charm of his historical pieces - from "Jules and Jim" to "The Last Métro" - Truffaut increasingly looks more comfortable with contemporary domestic dramas drawn from the bourgeois milieu so successfully explored by Chabrol in the early '70s. In this context, "The Woman Next Door" recounts its tale of amour fou in a provincial town - Depardieu (plus wife and kid) moves in next door to a newly-married woman (Ardant) with whom he had an obsessional affair eight years earlier - with absolute narrative confidence. But as Truffaut steers his audience towards the tragic dénouement, the effect is a curiously passive experience, as if, like passengers on a bus tour, we are offered a scenic excursion without ever being driven to the precipice from which his protagonists will fall. A long way from Hitchcock (and Chabrol), but a consistently watchable sub-thriller none the less.
— MA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Certainly the coldest film ever made about l'amour fou, Francois Truffaut's 1981 production fails to satisfy emotionally but contains some of his most creative direction post-"Jules and Jim". It's a very studied, very formal work in which a tale of fatal attraction (betweeen Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant) becomes a study of the contrasting implications of long takes and crosscutting, stiff compositions and fluid camera movements. Throughout, Truffaut insists on the physical barriers between his lovers--the space that separates their adjacent homes, the windows through which they look longingly at each other, and ultimately the film frame itself, with its narrowness and claustrophobia. In the end, the film is not about an attraction between two people, but about the love of the spectator for the image--the perverse transactions between the audience and the screen.
— Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
•••••
"The Woman Next Door" is a deeply unsettling portrait of obsession and madness. Truffaut juxtaposes extensive incongruities throughout the film in order to illustrate the duality of passion. Madame Jouve's narration seems to create objective distance. However, as a wounded survivor of a consuming love, she is, perhaps, the only one who can understand their story. Chronologically, we first meet Madame Jouve with a backdrop of a tennis match, then the camera zooms out to reveal that she has a prosthetic leg. The Coudrays hear a pair of violent cats one evening and describe them as either fighting or mating. Mathilde submits a bloody, graphic illustration for publication in a children's book. Inevitably, the love that binds Bernard and Mathilde together destroys them. "The Woman Next Door" is an elegant, brooding film that resonates with the haunting weight of profound love and inevitable tragedy.
— Acquarello
•••••
Truffaut présentait "La femme d'à côté" comme l'histoire limpide d'une passion amoureuse moderne. Il y déploie pourtant une extraordinaire maîtrise et un style d'une perfection inégalée pour rester à distance de cette œuvre sombre où rien ne semble pouvoir contrôler ou apaiser la force des passions. Mathilde et Bernard, en reprenant leur liaison, basculent dans un passé tragique qu'ils croyaient avoir exorcisé. Madame Jouve qui fuit le retour de son ancien amant pour lequel, vint ans avant, elle avait voulu mourir en se jetant dans le vide et qui garde dans son corps les stigmates de cette passion, présente la seule alternative civilisée à la force archaïque des passions. Dès la fin du générique, c'est à elle que Truffaut délègue la mise en forme du récit : elle sera narratrice et témoin de l'irruption du désordre passionnel dans l'ordre social.
Le film se divise en trois grandes parties que ponctuent trois longues scènes de détente et de réjouissance collectives. La première est la plus rassurante. Bernard et Mathilde vêtus de blanc, se confondent avec les bourgeois grenoblois, membres du club sportif. Franchissant à plusieurs reprise les portes grillagées des courts de tennis, les amants circulent sans difficulté dans cet espace de jeu et participent à ses divertissements. Une petite prise de bec entre eux à la fin de la scène demeurera privée et bénigne. Dans ce tableau réconfortant, la seule manifestation insolite sera l'arrivée inopinée d'un télégraphiste dont la caméra suivra, avec ironie le parcours à la recherche d'Odile Jouve. Lorsqu'il la trouvera enfin, madame Jouve paraîtra un instant soucieuse à la lecture du message qu'il lui remet. Bernard viendra affectueusement lui proposer son aide. Elle le renverra à ses jeux sans rien expliquer de son trouble. On apprendra plus tard que le message annonçait l'arrivée de son ancien amant.
La seconde grande fresque sociale prendra place dans le jardin des Bauchard où se pressent de nombreux invités. Au cours de cette garden-party où règne la bonne humeur, Bernard va peu à peu perdre complètement la tête. Deux incidents mettent le feu aux poudres. Il s'agit d'abord de l'annonce faite par Philippe que Mathilde et lui partent en voyage de noces le soir même. Peu après la robe de Mathilde s'accroche à une chaise et se défait d'un coup, révélant le corps de la jeune femme en lingerie légère. Elle court se changer en riant. Bernard, la mine sombre, la suit à l'intérieur, rôde un instant autour des valises et va finalement la chercher à l'intérieur de la chambre pour lui faire une scène d'une violence inouïe. Il la poursuit en la frappant, au milieu des invités qui regardent la scène, atterrés. Leur secret est révélé. Bernard va pouvoir se confier à Arlette et se calmer.
Le poids de leur passion repose désormais sur les seules épaules de Mathilde qui, au cours d'une réception au club de tennis, va, à son tour, perdre tout contrôle. On célèbre la parution de son livre pour enfants, et la scène débute dans le calme et la détente. Un double incident va, comme pour Bernard, transformer la fête en drame. Un petit incendie éclate d'abord brusquement dans la cuisine de madame Jouve. Alors que tous s'écartent, Mathilde se précipite saisissant un extincteur, et éteint le feu. Dans les toilettes où elle va ensuite se laver les mains, Mathilde surprend une conversation égrillarde entre deux hommes qui commentent les démêlés amoureux d'un de leurs amis avec sa voisine de palier. En sortant de la pièce l'un d'eux conclut :"il est en train de comprendre que la seule personne avec qui il ne faut jamais faire l'amour, c'est sa voisine de palier". Le visage de Mathilde se ferme alors. Au lieu d'aller rejoindre ses invités, elle s'éloigne vers les bosquets et s'effondre, secouée par les sanglots, le visage contre terre. C'est là que Philippe, parti à sa recherche en compagnie d'un groupe d'amis, la retrouvera quelques instants plus tard.
Au début du film, Bernard Coudray se présente comme un homme adulte, parfaitement intégré socialement avec maison, femme, enfant et travail. Dès les premières scènes, on nous montre que son mariage est heureux, sa vie sexuelle épanouie et son existence sans problème. Surgit alors la femme du passé, Mathilde dont la première apparition se fait de façon mémorable par les jambes. La caméra, placée derrière un escalier à claire-voie, cadre les jambes de la jeune femme comme elle descend les marches. Dès le début, Mathilde adopte vis à vis de Bernard une attitude de possession agressive. C'est elle qui l'appelle et, lorsqu'ils prendront enfin rendez-vous, l'image ne montera pas leur conversation au téléphone mais simplement Bernard, dans sa voiture, cherchant l'adresse de l'hôtel qu'on entend Mathilde lui donner en voix off. Il semble répondre, incapable de résister à l'appel qu'elle lui lance.
Tout le film suit le cours d'un mouvement régressif où Mathilde, figure de la mère archaïque et possessive, vient reprendre son fils, l'arracher à l'ordre social pour recréer avec lui une relation duelle qui les mènera à la mort. A la fin du film, elle tuera Bernard en lui tirant une balle dans la tête au cours de rapports sexuels. Le corps inerte de ce dernier s'effondrera littéralement entre les jambes de Mathilde, suggérant un retour de cet homme adulte au ventre maternel et au néant. Séparés, définis, identifiables au début du récit, Bernard et Mathilde se laisseront peu à peu entraîner dans un tourbillon vertigineux qui amènera leur fusion mortelle dans la dernière image. Jumeaux, doubles monstrueux, les amants projettent au sein d'une société paisible l'image insupportable d'un rapport symbiotique où les identités se trouvent inextricablement mêlées, où dépendance, besoin et manipulation mutuels sont privilégiés. Cette relation de nature régressive se modèle sur celle que l'enfant entretient avec sa mère. Placée sous le signe d'un désir illimité, elle enferme le couple dans le cycle infernal d'un mal que rien ne peut jamais apaiser.
L'utilisation de la musique dans le film est entièrement soumise aux instants où se manifeste le retour du refoulé, la résurgence incontrôlable des passions passées. Elle se fait entendre douze fois dans le récit : Mathilde regarde la maison de Bernard avant de lui téléphoner la première fois; Mathilde apprenant chez Bernard que celui-ci ne viendra pas dîner ; Bernard se cache dans le noir pour éviter les Bouchard; évanouissement de Mathilde dans le parking ; arrivée du télégraphiste ; Bernard part retrouver Mathilde en voiture à l'hôtel; retour de l'amant d'Odile Jouve ; étreinte des amants dans la voiture ; violence de Bernard à la garden-party ; conversation des deux hommes dans les toilettes sur la voisine de palier ; Mathilde détruisant le visage de Bernard sur ses photos, le suicide-meurtre de la dernière scène.
La violence archaïque et animale des rencontres des deux amants figure aussi parmi les plus mémorables ainsi la rencontre du parking. Bernard et Mathilde, qui se sont rencontrés par hasard au supermarché, avancent ensemble vers la voiture de la jeune femme. Bernard avait jusque là refusé tout contact avec elle ; il accepte maintenant de devenir son ami. Leur conversation est franche, enjouée, et ils se disent au revoir en s'embrassant sur les joues. Mais Mathilde soudain grave, lui demande de prononcer son nom. Bernard contourne la portière qui els séparait déjà, lui caresse le visage et dit : "Mathilde". Ils s'embrassent passionnément ; la jeune femme s'effondre évanouie sur le sol..
Cette régression de la culture vers une nature indomptée, menaçante et meurtrière se retrouve dans l'épisode des chats hurlants à l'amour dans la nuit, dans l'aboiement des chiens dans le parking souterrain au moment du baiser mais aussi, lorsque madame Jouve rentre de Paris et que son chien s'affole en voyant ses valises. Cet incident rappelle le comportement instinctif de Bernard qui, avant de frapper Mathilde devant les invités, rôde autour des valises qu'elle va emporter pour son voyage de noce. Une scène du premier scénario prévoyait par ailleurs de montrer un combat entre deux chiens dont les amants éteint les seuls à approuver la férocité.
— Anne Gillain : François Truffaut, le secret perdu