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Francois Truffaut _______________
France (1932-1984)
The commercial and critical success of The 400 Blows established Truffaut's international reputation. His follow-up, Shoot the Piano Player (1960), reflected a more complex sensibility, influenced by American B movies but tempered by mischievous wit and technical virtuosity. Jules and Jim (1961, based on HenriPierre Roche's book), arguably Truffaut's best film, follows the ever-changing relationship among three friends-Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, and Henri Serrebefore and after World War 1. An extraordinarily playful and evocative work, it is, as Stanley Kauffmann noted, "one of the moments when the history of the film suddenly grows."
The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim established Truffaut's debt to Renoir, but Shoot the Piano Player and many others that followed revealed his darker, more ironic side. The Soft Skin (1964), Mississippi Mermaid (1969), Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1973), Confidentially Yours (1983, his last film) and, especially, The Bride Wore Black (1968), showed his fondness for American thrillers, in particular the amoral tone of Alfred Hitchcock, a particular favorite whom Truffaut interviewed at length for the landmark critical tome Hitchcock-Truffaut (1967). Truffaut tried his hand at science-fiction with an intriguing, though curiously detached, adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 (1967) and made a number of intriguing, if not entirely successful, period dramas: The Wild Child (1970), about a late 18th-century scientist who tries to civilize a wild boy found in the woods; The Story of Adele H (1975), with Isabelle Adjani, unforgettable as the daughter of Victor Hugo; The Green Room (1978), with Truffaut in the lead role as a death-obsessed journalist; and The Last Metro (1980), about a French theatrical troupe dealing with Nazi occupation. He also perceptively examined the pains of romantic entanglements in the comedy The Man Who Loved Women (1977) and the sensitive The Woman Next Door (1981).
Some critics complained that Truffaut's later films did not match the explosive quality of his early work, but Joseph McBride noted, "If the sweeping camerawork, breathless cutting and joie de vivre of Truffaut's early work seemed less evident as his career progressed, the lessening of those qualities was balanced by a more rigorous approach to narrative, a masterful sobriety of style and an even more profound richness of emotion." Some of his later triumphs include the exquisite ménage ê trois Two English Girls (1972), also based on a Roche novel and almost on a par with Jules and Jim and the charming and insightful children's story Small Change (1976). He enjoyed one of his greatest latter-day successes with Day for Night (1973), a delightful, episodic salute to the highs and lows of filmmaking, conveyed with the ease and apparent effortlessness that characterized so much of Truffaut's work. (It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and earned Truffaut nominations for Best Director and for cowriting the screenplay.) Such ease behind the camera was occasionally proven in front of it as well, with his performances as the scientist in The Wild Child, the supremely patient director in Day for Night, a small role as an officer in The Story of Adele H and the lead in The Green Room. He also took the role of the French scientist Lacombe in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) to learn what it was like to work for another director.
At the time of his death (from a brain tumor) Truffaut was planning to direct The Little Thief his associate Claude Miller ultimately made the film, from Truffaut's script. His longtime assistant and frequent collaborator Suzanne Schiffman also embarked on her own directing career after his death. His early film criticism has been anthologized, as has a volume of his letters.
(Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia. Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin)
Francois Truffaut. In French.
"André Bazin and François Truffaut." André Bazin: An Unofficial Tribute To The World-Renowned Film Critic And Film Theorist. www.unofficialbaziniantrib.com. Brief but useful discussion about Bazin and his relationship with Truffaut.
Bove, Carol. "Revisiting Modernism with Kristeva: DeBeauvoir, Truffaut, and Renoir. Journal of Modern Literature 25.3 (Summer 2002): 114-223.
Excellent article that discusses Jules and Jim from the perspective of postmodern feminist theory.
Holmes, Diana, and Robert Ingram. Francois Truffaut. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1998.
See also books listed under Film Theory about the French New Wave.
PQ2191.Z5 D23 2000 C.1 2000
PN1998.A3 T75 1970
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Influential filmmaker who was at the forefront of Europe's New Wave movement of the late 1950s. A lifelong movie buff whose initial contact with the industry was as a critic and historian for André Bazin's influential magazine "Cahiers du Cinéma," Truffaut laid down the groundwork for the "auteur" theory-that the director is the primary creator of a film-in a 1954 article that inspired a generation of European filmmakers. He began making short films around that time, and also worked as assistant to director Roberto Rossellini for a time before finishing his debut feature, The 400 Blows in 1959. A semiautobiographical story, it focused on the difficult adolescence of one Antoine Doinel, who was played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, and earned the writer-director an Oscar nomination for his screenplay. (Throughout his career, Truffaut kept coming back to Doinel, who aged into adulthood over a 20-year period and was always played by Leaud. This autobiographical strain of the director's work includes one segment of the episodic 1962 film Love at Twenty, 1968's Stolen Kisses, 1970's Bed and Board and 1979's Love on the Run.