François Truffaut – Cinema as an Act of Love by tom cole

Aner Preminger

FRANĂ&#x2021;OIS TRUFFAUT Cinema as an Act of Love An Intertextual Approach

Aner Preminger

FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT Cinema as an Act of Love An Intertextual Approach

Senior Editors & Producers: Contento Translated by: Mindy Ivry Editor: Sherrill Layton Cover & Book Design: Liliya Lev Ari The cover's photo is taken from The 400 Blows – © André Dino/MK2 DR.

Copyright © 2015 Contento and Aner Preminger All rights reserved. No part of this book may be translated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher. ISBN: 978-965-550-495-8 International sole distributor: Contento 22 Isserles Street, 6701457, Tel Aviv, Israel netanel@contento-publishing.com www.ContentoNow.com

Aner Preminger

FRANĂ&#x2021;OIS TRUFFAUT Cinema as an Act of Love An Intertextual Approach

Antoine Doinel ( Jean-Pierre Léaud) in the final scene of The 400 Blows. © André Dino/MK2 DR.

“The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.” —François Truffaut

In memory of my mother and father, whose spirits were with me while writing this book.

Table of Contents Prologue............................................................................................................. 9

PART I FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT – From Life to Cinema From Cinema to Life . 15 Chapter 1: The Film of His Life – Biography ................................................. 19 Chapter 2: The Films of his Life – Filmography ............................................. 35 Chapter 3: Collector of Culture ....................................................................... 57

PART II Intertextuality – The Theoretical Discourse ................................................ 63 Chapter 4: Defining the Intertextual Discourse ............................................... 67 Intertextuality ............................................................................... 67 Intertext ........................................................................................ 69 Intertextual Categories .................................................................. 70 The Bloomian Discourse .............................................................. 71 Chapter 5: Cinematic Intertextuality: Applying the Semiotic-Conceptual Framework .............................................. 83 The Status of Intertextuality in Cinema Studies Today ................ 84 An Overview of Intertextual Approaches in Cinema Studies ....... 85 A Summary of the Intertextual Studies of Truffaut’s Films ......... 96 Uncharted Fields of Study in Cinematic Intertextuality .................................. 97 Chapter 6: François Truffaut and the French New Wave The Historical Context................................................................................... 103 The Importance of Intertextuality in the Study of Truffaut and the French New Wave.......................................................... 103 François Truffaut as Reflected Through the Prism of Harold Bloom ......................................................... 107 From Realistic-Classical Narrative to Modernism ..................... 111 Chapter 7: Hypotheses and Goals .................................................................. 115 Study’s Goals ............................................................................. 115 Methodology .............................................................................. 117

PART III The Films in His Life ................................................................................... 119 Chapter 8: The Mischief Makers (Les Mistons, 1957) .................................. 123 Chapter 9: The Antoine Doinel Cycle ........................................................... 135 The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959) ...........................................135 Antoine and Colette – Love at Twenty (Antoine et Colette – L’Amour à Vingt Ans, 1962) .........................................................................173 Stolen Kisses (Baisers Volés, 1968) ..............................................................184 Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugal, 1970) ....................................................201 Love on the Run (L’Amour en Fuite, 1979) ..................................................220 Antoine Doinel and The Human Comedy ......................................................239 Chapter 10: Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le Pianiste, 1960) .................. 243 Chapter 11: Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim, 1961) .............................................. 261 Evolution of the Narrative in Truffaut’s First Three Films: from the Classical Realist to the Modern .......................................................288 Chapter 12: The Pygmalion Trilogy .............................................................. 293 Chapter 13: The Soft Skin (La Peau Douce, 1964) ....................................... 315 Chapter 14: Mississippi Mermaid (La Sirène du Mississippi, 1969) ..............333 Chapter 15: Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine, 1973)................................ 347 Chapter 16: Conclusion - Truffaut’s Cinema ................................................ 403

PART IV APPENDICES ............................................................................................. 411 Chapter 17: Quantitative Tables .................................................................... 415 Chapter 18: Study Objectives – A Summary................................................. 437 Filmography .................................................................................................. 445 Bibliography .................................................................................................. 453 General Index ................................................................................................ 461 Index of Books .............................................................................................. 465 Index of Names ............................................................................................. 468 Film Index ..................................................................................................... 481

Prologue François Truffaut - Cinema as an Act of Love derives from an extensive study of Truffaut’s films and constitutes an expanded version of the Hebrew book François Truffaut - The Man Who Loved Films published by Hakibbutz Hameuhad, The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University, and Sapir College in 2006. The book is based on my doctoral dissertation, “Cinematic Intertextuality and the Films of François Truffaut,” written under the supervision of Professor Ziva BenPorat and Professor Michal Freedman and submitted to Tel Aviv University in December 2001. Since then, I continue to study Truffaut’s films, and their intertextuality, both for my own research and as a teacher and dissertation supervisor of students studying Truffaut’s films. My acquaintance with Truffaut’s films began more than 40 years ago, as an enchanted viewer. As a film student and later, as a filmmaker, I found his work instructional and illuminating. My familiarity with his cinematic oeuvre has evolved over my thirty-year career as a teacher of film studies. In twenty years of research, I have viewed each Truffaut film dozens of times and I find them ceaselessly enjoyable and fulfilling. Each viewing reveals added nuances and increasingly complex dimensions in terms of content and the original manner in which he confronts cinematic poetics. The unique nature of such an innovative and wide-ranging filmmaker 9

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as Truffaut is difficult to encapsulate, and it is impossible to express the “bottom line” on such a complex long-term research project. I believe that Truffaut’s uniqueness and special, powerful cinema is expressed, among other things, by the fact that his films address two levels simultaneously. On the one hand, one finds a mildly experienced simplicity that allows most viewers, even nonprofessionals, to follow the plot and enjoy Truffaut’s virtuosity as a dramatic, moving, humorous, and humane storyteller without feeling that they’ve failed to grasp the filmmaker’s intentions. On another level, most of his films are complex masterpieces that address profound issues, complicated interrelationships, tangled passions, and multi-faceted characters. Truffaut’s power and distinctive portrayals of nuanced complexity are inherent to his wide-ranging ability to alternate between emotional and stylistic tones effortlessly and naturally.

Concurrently, his films, for the most part, were innovative for their time, undermined cinematic norms, and defined numerous innovations, the sum of which constituted a significant contribution to the development of cinematic language during the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Combining these two seemingly contradictory levels awards Truffaut a place in the small group of innovative humanistic filmmakers that includes Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, and Vittorio De Sica. It was these dual features that led me in the choices I made in adapting my doctoral thesis into this book. On the one hand, I felt the importance of preserving the references to as many relevant sources as possible, as well as to the intertextual theories prevalent in semiotic literary criticism, an indispensable element in developing the tools necessary to illuminate the depth, complexity, and innovation of Truffaut’s films. On the other hand, in my desire to remain faithful to Truffaut’s style, I refrain from including cumbersome quotations to provide clear, simple summaries of the relevant theories. Cinema as an Act of Love divides into four sections. Part I constructs the historical 10

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and cultural context of Truffaut’s oeuvre and includes a short review of his biography, which plays a central part in his films; a review of his filmography, and finally, an analysis of the manner in which he internalized his cultural background. Part II relates to the theoretical grid on which I base my interpretations of Truffaut’s films; it is researchoriented and contains a wide range of academic information, explained in as straightforward a manner as possible. Part III, the heart of the book, as it were, is dedicated to the discussion and interpretation of eleven major films from Truffaut’s corpus. Part IV includes appendices that summarize the quantitative aspects of the research and examine its conclusions in light of the study’s original goals. And lastly, this section includes a detailed filmography, bibliography and indices. Cinema as an Act of Love is a book for viewers who are interested in and love Truffaut’s films, including those viewers less practiced in reading academic or theoretical texts. Anyone interested in understanding why Truffaut’s films are so moving and enjoyable, why he influences so many filmmakers, or why he has become one of the most important filmmakers of the twentieth century will find many of the answers in Cinema as an Act of Love, as will film school students or scholars and researchers in the fields of cinema studies, literature, art or cultural studies. For consistency’s sake, I use gender-specific nouns common for the time in which Truffaut’s film were made, and in no way does this stylistic choice claim gender bias. Readers will find a comprehensive and far-ranging analysis of a unique and significant cultural icon, a master of cinematic language, and a man of profound and expansive culture. To paraphrase a sentence from Truffaut’s film, Day for Night, I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Finally, I’d like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the following people: I’d like to thank my devoted doctoral advisors, Professor Michal Freedman, who has accompanied me for many years in my love for French Cinema in general, and François Truffaut, in particular. Professor Freedman’s vast knowledge of historical cinema has been a 11

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great aid in enabling the verification and examination of my theories within the wider context of a multi-dimensional cinematic heritage; Professor Ziva Ben-Porat, who illuminated the way when I began to decipher the entanglements of intertextual theory. Her comments during the various stages of my research helped me refine and clarify the relevance of intertextual discourse to interpreting Truffaut’s films. Professor Yesha’ayahu Nir, one of the members of my dissertation committee, whose feedback provided a detailed and instructive response to my research, proving very helpful when I expanded my original study to its present format. I am also grateful to Professor Yehuda Moraly, who read my manuscript in the early stages of revision, believed in the importance of its publication, and provided encouragement and valuable comments. I would like to thank the staff and administration at Sapir College for their help and support in bringing this project to fruition. I am especially grateful to Professor Ze’ev Zahor, the former president of the college, who tirelessly expressed his interest and encouragement during my doctoral research and provided support and aid during the publication process. To Nachmi Paz, the college’s CEO and to Muhammad Abu Abed, who provided practical support during the publication of the Hebrew version of this book. I would like to thank Mindy Ivry, who translated the book from Hebrew to English, for her careful work, and faithful and accurate translation. Many thanks also to Netanel Semrik, CEO at Contento, who recognized the importance of the Hebrew book, introduced its publication in English, and who, with his devoted staff, has accompanied its translation and production, uncompromisingly fulfilling all of my demands to produce a perfect result. I am very grateful to the kind and generous people who gave me the right to use their stills from Truffaut’s films: Ronit Shany who took Truffaut’s unique profiles during his 1980 visit in Israel; Laura and Eva Truffaut who gave me the family permission to use Truffaut’s pictures; Anne-Laure Barbarit from MK2 for André Dino’s still pictures from The 12

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400 Blows; Dominique le Rigoleur for her still pictures from Love on the Run. All these pictures are a significant contribution to the book. I am grateful to my friend, Yoram Navon, who joined me in watching Truffaut’s films for many years, listened to my ideas on applying intertextual approaches to the interpretation of his films, questioned my theories, provided illuminating comments, and helped with the translation’s early stages. My heartfelt gratitude goes to my wife, Michal, my partner and witness to my enthusiasm for Truffaut’s films. Her comments during my original research and its following publication in Hebrew were the first feedback I received, and her insights helped me refine my thoughts and perfect my formulations. My sister, Lilach Lachman, read parts of my early study and her on-target remarks helped me clarify and refine my arguments. And finally, I’d like to thank my children, Matan, Ayana and Tamar, for their support, interest and participation in the journey that this study has been and in which I’ve been involved since they were born. Aner Preminger

PART I FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT

From Life to Cinema From Cinema to Life

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession or a diary.â&#x20AC;? (Truffaut, 1978, (1975), p. 19)

The 400 Blows (1959) – Antoine and René stealing posters from Cinema Pigalle; seen here with a still photo from Ingmar Bergman's film Summer with Monika.

“I was twelve when I decided to be a film director because I’d been seeing movies.” (Truffaut & Moussy, 1969, p. 231)

1 The Film of His Life – Biography François Truffaut’s book, The Films in My Life (1975), begins with two quotes: “I believe a work is good to the degree that it expresses the man who created it” (Orson Welles), and “These books were alive and they spoke to me” (Henry Miller, The Books in My Life). These two quotes faithfully express Truffaut’s understanding of the dialectical relationship between life and film. He believes, like Welles, that an oeuvre’s quality depends on the existence of a profound affinity between the work and its creator. In other words, an artist’s inner world defines and formulates his work. On the other hand, a work of art defines the inner world of its creator and speaks to the reader in his name—just as books speak to Miller, living films speak to Truffaut, as they provide a vibrant and real encounter with their creators. The interrelationship between a film, its creator, and the creator’s life is a constant theme throughout Truffaut’s films. Truffaut was the first filmmaker to legitimize cinematic autobiography, a genre that originated with his Antoine Doinel cycle of five films. Many of his other films included autobiographical details as well, as did his films in which he adapted literary works. From the moment he became a professional filmmaker, his life was interwoven with his films, and his films immediately became an integral part of his autobiography. At times, he even changed his biography to suit his films’ dramatic demands. Moreover, Truffaut addresses the connection between autobiography and a work of art and the reciprocal relationship between the two in many of his films. The fascinating affinity between 19

François Truffaut - Cinema as an Act of Love

his personal life and his films compels one to delve into his biography while a review of his turbulent life story grants another perspective to our understanding of his films and creative processes. After Truffaut’s death, historian Antoine de Baecque and film critic Serge Toubiana conducted intensive research into his life, based on thousands of documents from his estate as well as interviews with relatives and friends. They produced a biographical documentary (Stolen Portraits 1993), as well as a lengthy book (François Truffaut 1996). Truffaut’s correspondence, dating from age thirteen (1945) until ten months before his death (October, 1984), was published in a book (François Truffaut, Correspondence 1988) edited by Gilles Jacob and Claude de Givray. François Truffaut was born in Paris on February 6, 1932, when his mother, Janine de Monferrand was not yet twenty. Her family kept her pregnancy secret, and the child’s father was registered as unknown. At the age of twenty months, he was adopted by Roland Truffaut, who married his mother two weeks later. The circumstances of his birth and even his very existence were kept secret from close family members for quite some time. Two days after his birth, François was sent to a wet nurse, who raised him until he was three years old, with infrequent visits from his mother. From the age of three until her death when he was ten, Truffaut’s grandmother cared for him. To his mother’s displeasure, he then moved for the first time to his parents’ home’. He felt rejected and hated his mother. He expresses his feelings in the film The Man Who Loved Women (L’Homme qui Aimait Les Femmes 1977). The leading character, Bertrand Morane (Charles Denner), is a child who sits in the middle of a room reading a book, glancing occasionally at his scantily clad mother who wanders about completely ignoring his existence. Denner tells the story in a voice-over: “She was in the habit of walking around half-nude, not to provoke me but rather, I suppose, to confirm to herself that I did not exist” (The Man Who Loved Women, 1977, 1:04:25-1:04:32). The episode is filmed as an aggressive act aimed at writing off 20

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Bertrand’s existence rather than a seduction scene. He perceives his mother’s behavior as a personal statement against him. This scene seems to depict the very essence of rejection and humiliation that Truffaut suffered under his mother during his childhood. As an adolescent, he was never told by his parents, or by any other family member, that Roland Truffaut was not his biological father. The details of his birth were shrouded in mystery, as was his exact age, and he never understood why questions about his early life were met with obviously contrived replies or lies. His imagination and suspicions intensified with the novels he loved to read and to which he was addicted from a young age, especially those of Charles Dickens. Inspired by David Copperfield, the young Truffaut invented a complex story surrounding the mystery of his birth. His suspicions were verified when he was twelve years old, when he found an old diary in his father’s closet, dating from the year of his birth. His father had marked the significant events of 1932 in his journal, as well as less important dates: trips he had taken, recreational events, and birthdays. The page for February 6, Truffaut’s birthday, was empty, confirming his suspicions that Roland was not his biological father. Truffaut, an adolescent playing detective, whose forbidden probing and snooping accompanied feelings of guilt, combined these disconnected snippets of information and reached a crucial conclusion. Metaphorically, this formative experience, which led to highly significant insights regarding his identity, may be regarded as his first directorial experience. Truffaut’s school days were extremely difficult. He was left back a grade several times and expelled from one school and transferred to another, even finding himself at one time in a class that he believed he had already completed several years earlier. He skipped school frequently and spent his time wandering in the streets, playing in amusement parks or watching films. He was an expert at sneaking into cinemas without paying, and his methods often appear in later films. The young Truffaut was a compulsive reader and acquired his 21

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broad education in public libraries. Lacking an allowance from his parents, Truffaut became a thief, and he later illustrated his stealing, with slight adaptations to narrative demands, in his films. He would dismantle the gold door handles found in cinema bathrooms, trade them for alcoholic beverages on the black market, a common activity during the German Occupation, and then trade the alcohol for cash at another black market. At the age of fourteen, in an attempt to live independently and make an honest living, he apprenticed himself to a merchant in a Parisian market. For a year and a half, Truffaut gave his parents two thirds of his earnings, spending the remaining third on entertainment, primarily books and cinema admission. He left his parents’ home and moved in with his close friend, Robert Lachenay, later a film critic. Lachenay, a year and a half older than Truffaut, was the older brother he never had. They shared a love of films and developed techniques to turn their hobby into money-making schemes, stealing advertising posters or stills from cinemas and selling them, while keeping the exceptional ones for their personal collection. Early in his adolescence, Truffaut developed a systematic and binding approach to reading books and watching films, adopting a regimen of reading three books each week and watching three films every day. Paris film clubs were flourishing then, showing collections of the best of the world’s films, often with lectures given by the leading film critics of the time. Truffaut frequented these clubs and was especially fond of Henri Langlois’ Cinémathèque, which opened in December 1944. Langlois’ structured programs were Truffaut and his future French New Wave colleagues’ school of film. Truffaut was a voracious filmgoer who often watched the same films repeatedly. He knew entire dialogues by heart and mastered the shots, camera angles, and lighting effects. He kept a detailed account of the screenings he had attended, including repeat viewings. In 1945, for example, when he was thirteen, he watched screenings of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (La Règle 22

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du Jeu 1939) twelve times within several weeks. Recalling that time, in 1967 Truffaut wrote: We look at this movie with a strong feeling of complicity; I mean that instead of seeing a finished product handed to us to satisfy our curiosity, we feel we are there as the film is made, we almost think that we can see Renoir organize the whole as we watch the film projected. For an instant, we think to ourselves, ‘I’ll come back tomorrow and see if it all turns out the same way.’ It’s why some of the best evenings of the year would be spent watching La Règle du Jeu (Truffaut, 1978, (1975), p. 42). His first experience of re-watching a film was a chance event. When he was ten years old, his aunt invited him to a screening of Marcel Carné’s The Devil’s Envoys (Les Visiteurs du Soir 1942), and he did not dare admit that he had already seen it when he had been playing truant from school. This is how he described his stunning revelation: That was the first time I realized how fascinating it can be to probe deeper and deeper into a work one admires, that the exercise can go so far as to create the illusion of reliving the creation (Truffaut, 1978, (1975), p. 3). This anecdote is of latent crucial significance, beyond Truffaut’s thrilling discovery on the deeper understanding reached when rewatching a film one loves. The need to conceal his truancy and thievery had a decisive effect on the way he related to the films he saw: I saw my first two hundred films on the sly, playing hooky and slipping into the movie house without paying – through the emergency exit or the washroom window – or by taking advantage of my parents’ going out for an evening (I had to be in bed, pretending to be asleep, when they came home). I paid for these great pleasures with stomachaches, cramps, nervous headaches and guilty feelings, which only heightened the emotions evoked by the films (ibid.). 23

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In 1948, at the age of sixteen, Truffaut co-founded with his friend, Lachenay, the film society “Le Cercle Cinémane” (The Movie Mania Circle). Henri Langlois, touched by Truffaut’s enthusiasm and perseverance, tried to help by lending him copies of two short films, Rene Clair’s 1924 Entr’acte and Luis Buñuel’s 1928 Un Chien Andalou. However, unauthorized screenings of full-length features such as Jean Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète 1930( encountered difficulties because Truffault lacked the necessary connections and budget to circumvent the restrictive distribution laws. Truffaut, trying to maneuver in a new and unfamiliar milieu, became entangled in fraud, in loans he could not repay, and even theft. In addition, he had given up his job to devote himself to his film club, a fact he had not disclosed to his parents. He continued giving them their share of his supposed salary, including forged pay slips he had stolen from his former employer before he quit. Outraged distributors, owed money by Truffaut, called on his father, who was stunned to hear of his son’s dealings. His father forced him to confess his sins and had him sign the following document: I swear under oath that the following facts are true. I left my job at Simpère five months ago and brought home forged pay slips for purposes of deception. I sold books at the book-and-stationery store La Paix Chez Soi. I stole a typewriter from the offices of the French Boy Scouts and sold it for 4,000 francs to Jacques Enfer in September 1948. I owe money to […]1(De Baecque and Toubiana, 1999, p. 39). Once the young Truffaut had signed the document, his father paid his debts in full, believing that he had learned his lesson. However, Truffaut was determined to continue running the film club, even after this humiliating experience. He held three additional screenings before 1

The list of people to whom Truffaut owed funds follows, totaling 24,605 francs, which was more than an average monthly salary. 24

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his father appeared at the club and dragged him out, in front of all his friends, declaring that he wouldn’t be seeing them for quite some time. François was forcibly taken to the nearest police station, where Roland filed a formal complaint and left. De Baecque and Toubiana’s detailed description of these and succeeding events, resulting in Truffaut’s imprisonment in an institution for juvenile delinquents, reads as an exact depiction of the corresponding scenes in his first feature-length film, The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups 1959). Although running his film club involved Truffaut in financial difficulties, it also led to his meeting one of the people who was to have an immense impact on his future life. Truffaut and Lachenay’s screenings took place on Sunday afternoons, the same time as those at the popular and influential film club belonging to Andre Bazin, one of the leading film theorists and critics of all times. Truffaut, somewhat naively, and without having been introduced, asked Bazin to change his club’s show times. His meeting with Bazin, who was then thirty years old, was a fateful one. Bazin was impressed and touched by the young boy. He later adopted him and served as the father figure so lacking in Truffaut’s life. Truffaut began to frequent Bazin’s club, where he met the writer and film critic, Alexandre Astruc, and the director, Alain Resnais, both of whom significantly influenced his later career. In March 1949, thanks to Bazin’s efforts and his willingness to support him, Truffaut was released after spending four months in a strict institution for juvenile delinquents, although he remained under partial supervision. He then spent some time in Bazin’s home, where he found a loving and supportive family for the first time in his life. Bazin helped him find temporary employment projecting movies, as a film lecturer and in journalism, but Truffaut found it hard to keep any of these jobs and remained restless and dissatisfied. Late in 1950, under the illusion that a military environment would be beneficial, Truffaut joined the army. Two years later, much of which he spent in military hospitals and prisons, after serving a prison term for 25

François Truffaut - Cinema as an Act of Love

desertion, he was discharged on mental health grounds. Once more, Andre Bazin and Alain Resnais had expended considerable energy in securing his release. In 1953, Bazin founded Cahiers du Cinéma, a magazine that was to become the most influential in film history. He offered Truffaut a job, together with his friends, the future leaders of the French New Wave movement. For the first time in his life, Truffaut felt fulfilled by his career and realized that he could make a living doing something he enjoyed. He soon became a dominant and influential figure at the magazine, where he began to define the cinematic revolution that he would lead some years later, together with his friends Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. Truffaut made his first short film, Une Visite, in 1955, with Resnais and Jacques Rivette. He worked with Roberto Rossellini as an assistant director for nearly two years, beginning in 1956. Rossellini was one of the leading directors of the Italian Neo-Realist school, and Truffaut’s professional filmmaking career actually began during this period. In 1957, Truffaut married Madeleine Morgenstern, the daughter of Ignace Morgenstern, who was an influential and successful film producer and distributor, of the sort relentlessly attacked by Truffaut and his colleagues at Cahiers du Cinéma. In 1958, his second short film, The Mischief Makers (Les Mistons) won the prize for Best Director at the Festival du Film Mondial in Brussels. Simultaneously, Truffaut was banned as a critic at the Cannes Film Festival because of his attacks in Cahiers describing the festival as conservative and lacking cinematic vision. That same year, Truffaut made a short documentary, A Story of Water (Une Histoire D’Eau), in collaboration with Godard. In 1959, he returned to Cannes as a filmmaker with his first feature, The 400 Blows, and was awarded Best Director, at the age of twenty-seven. His Cannes award, as well as Alain Resnais’ Critics’ Award for Hiroshima mon Amour (1959), and Marcel Camus’s Best Film award for Orfeo Negro (1959) signified the outbreak of the French New Wave revolution and marked Truffaut’s significance 26

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as a central figure in that group of filmmakers. His eldest daughter, Laura, was born in 1959, and his second daughter, Eva, was born in 1961. During the decade that had passed since he was released from the institution for juvenile delinquents, Truffaut had been estranged from his parents. Their relationship was distant and alienated, and Truffaut lived entirely independently and tried to have as little contact with them as possible. After The 400 Blows was released to much commercial and critical acclaim, remaining in the center of French public debate for some time, the connection between the film and Truffaut’s personal life story was clear to all. His parents were deeply offended by things written in the reviews and by the way they were portrayed by the press, so much so they refused to see the film. In a bitter, furious, and insulting letter, Roland wrote to François: The press gone wild concerning The 400 Blows. You probably want to make us believe that we’re responsible for the way you are. Love of camping maybe, but you, little shit, how much did 2

you cost me in movies? … And what about IDHEC, which I offered to pay for, little idiot, and which you turned down… Why come to see us on Thursdays for four years running? Sheer hypocrisy… Maybe you’ll now find time to grant me an interview concerning articles that have appeared in the press… you’ll surely be moved to see these squalid lodgings again where you were so ‘mistreated’ by ignorant parents that they later allowed you to become a glorious and disinterested ‘child martyr.’ P.S. I wish to make it clear that you’ll be physically safe when you come: the garbage will be emptied and I won’t inform the police stations (De Baecque and Toubiana, 1999, p. 139). A week later, Truffaut replied in a long and touching letter. In it he wrote: I regret, like you, the abuses of this publicity; they questioned 2

The Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris 27

François Truffaut - Cinema as an Act of Love

people who had known me, they purchased pictures from army chums, they simplified, magnified, deformed things, all of which is common in this type of journalism. However, I’m going to denounce all of this exaggeration in Arts and partially deny the ‘autobiographical’ side of the film. I think it might be good for us to have an earnest discussion, but only after you’ve seen the film… of what happened to me, I only filmed what happens or could happen in other families… despite the unpleasantness of seeing some silly things published in the papers, I haven’t the slightest regret about having made this film. I knew I would hurt you, but I don’t care, for since Bazin’s death I have no parents. I would have shot a truly horrifying film had I depicted what my life was like on rue de Navarin between 1943 and 1948, and my relationship with Mom and you. During the whole period of rations3, I didn’t eat a single piece of chocolate; you used to take it to Fontainebleau. You went away on Saturdays and left practically nothing for me. I got by by stealing lumps of sugar… A child who finds he is the only one in school not to have a ‘snack’ can’t help wondering… I hated Mother in silence and liked you but felt contempt… You’re ironical in your letter about my returning from Cannes ‘finally freed of my many complexes.’ You couldn’t have stated it better: for two months I’ve had the feeling of having dispelled an old nightmare and of having become a man who is fit to bring up a child (ibid. p. 140-141). As he had promised his parents, Truffaut did publish an article in Arts, denying any resemblance between his parents and Antoine Doinel’s:

If the young Antoine Doinel sometimes resembles the turbulent adolescent I was, his parents bear absolutely no resemblance to mine, who were excellent… (ibid. p. 141). Following a short meeting with his father, he had no further contact 3

Food rationing during World War II 28

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with them. His mother never met her granddaughters, and his father met Laura for the first time in 1979, when she was twenty years old. Truffaut’s career as a filmmaker soared following his Cannes award. He made twenty-one films over the next twenty-four years while continuing to write about the cinema. He published several important books, including a comprehensive and informative book-length interview with Hitchcock, in which he discusses his films; a book that demonstrates some of the novel cinematic writing that Truffaut had introduced in Cahiers du Cinéma. Truffaut also wrote screenplays for other directors such as the screenplay for Jean-Luc Godard’s debut film, Breathless (À Bout de Souffle, 1959). Truffaut’s production company, Les Films du Carrosse (Chariot Films), produced films directed by his New Wave colleagues, besides Truffaut’s own films, as well as films by younger filmmakers whose work he admired. Truffaut acted in several films, playing the leading character in three of his own films. He acted in Steven Spielberg’s

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) playing the role of a French teacher who mediated between the aliens’ language and that of earth’s inhabitants, the only capable of understanding the languages of two opposing worlds and teaches them how to communicate with each other. In choosing Truffaut for the role, I believe Spielberg demonstrates his perception of Truffaut’s films and their significance in the world’s cinematic canon as a bridge between European cinema and Hollywood’s movies. In 1968, when the French authorities fired Henri Langlois, the director and founder of the Cinémathèque Française, Truffaut, and Godard led protests and demonstrations soon joined by Paris’s cultural and intellectual elite, as well as leading filmmakers from all over the world. Following their persistent efforts over the course of several months, Langlois was reinstated as director of the Cinémathèque Française. Some historians believe that their activities during that winter were instrumental in inciting the student rebellion of May 1968. Truffaut 29

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and Godard forced the cancellation of the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, in solidarity with the protests, which had spread across France. That same year, while writing the screenplay for Stolen Kisses (Baisers Volés 1968), Truffaut, true to type, once again blurred the borders between his private life and his films. Antoine, the film’s chief protagonist, finds a job at a private detective agency. Since most of the film takes place in a detective’s office, Truffaut, as part of his research, contacted a private investigator, Albert Duchenne, and accompanied him on his rounds, eventually requesting that he locate his biological father, based on the scant information available regarding this well-kept family secret. Several weeks later, Duchenne discovered that Truffaut’s father was a Jewish dentist named Roland Levy, who lived in the town of Belfort in Provence. Having been told by the detective that Levy walked his dog at a certain time every day, Truffaut waited outside his home, watched him walk by without approaching him and never saw him again. Later, Truffaut claimed that he did not see the point in going up to a strange man and telling him that François Truffaut was his son. His mother died in August 1968, and only then did Truffaut discover that she’d been following his professional career closely and had a collection of marked newspaper cuttings in her apartment. For the first time, Truffaut realized that, contrary to what he had thought throughout his life, his mother had taken an interest in him after all and had tried, in her own way, to be involved in his life. Going through his mother’s articles provided him with a sense of closure following the traumatic discovery he had experienced at the age of twelve, regarding his father’s identity. His discovery’s intense impact resonates in the final Antoine Doinel film, Love on the Run (L’Amour en Fuite 1979), especially in light of the scene from The Man Who Loved Women described at the beginning of this chapter, which was also integrated into Love on the Run.

The last love of Truffaut’s life, Fanny Ardant, starred in his last two films and was the mother of his daughter, Joséphine, who was born in September 1983. Truffaut died in October 1984 of a brain tumor 30

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that had been diagnosed fourteen months earlier. His family—Fanny Ardant, Madeleine Morgenstern and Laura and Eva Truffaut—chose not to reveal the terminal nature of his illness to him, and they were at his side during the last days of his life. Once one realizes how deeply embedded Truffaut’s biography is in his films, one is immediately reminded of his “profession of faith,” formulated in 1957, before he became a professional director: The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. The young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person and will relate what has happened to them: it may be the story of their first love or their most recent; of their political awakening; the story of a trip, a sickness, their military service, their marriage, their last vacation… and it will be enjoyable because it will be true and new… the film of tomorrow will be an act of love (Truffaut, 1978, (1975), p. 19).

“Since you want some definition of the young cinema, let’s say that we all come to the screen by detesting French Cinema and admiring the Americans, whose free and easy manner where technique is concerned and whose flexible camera we have kept. Of course, so far as our creative resources are concerned, our heritage is French.” (Truffaut & Moussy, 1969, p. 231)

The 400 Blows (1959) – Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) in a prison cell. © André Dino/MK2 DR.

2 The Films of his Life – Filmography From 1955 to 1983, François Truffaut made twenty-five films: four short films (one of which was in collaboration with Jean-Luc Goddard), and twenty-one full-length features. The following chapters focus on eleven films, providing in-depth interpretations based on cinematic intertextuality4, a theory that offers an optimal, unique, and enriching approach to Truffaut’s films. As we shall see, these analyses support the premise elaborated throughout this study as to the significance and indispensability of intertextual tools in interpreting films in general. Other Truffaut films are mentioned when relevant to the concepts proposed or when they shed additional light on any of the films discussed in depth. The selected films represent Truffaut’s long and varied cinematic career: Short films: The Mischief Makers and Antoine and Colette; and nine features, either original Truffaut screenplays in collaboration with additional screenwriters: The Mischief Makers, the Antoine Dionel cycle, The Soft Skin, Day for Night; or adaptations of literary works: Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim and Mississippi Mermaid; films from early in his career: The Mischief Makers (1957), The 400 Blows (1959), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1961), Antoine and Colette (1962), The Soft Skin (1964); as well as one of his last films: Love on the Run (1978.)

See part 2 below. 35

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The autobiographical Antoine Doinel cycle is comprised of five films: The 400 Blows (1959), Antoine and Colette (1962), Stolen Kisses (1968),

Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1978). In the remaining six films, The Mischief Makers (1957), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1961), The Soft Skin (1964), Mississippi Mermaid (1969) and Day for Night (1973), the Antoine character resounds throughout, and though he is not physically present, the films contain numerous autobiographical elements. Day for Night, one of the films Truffaut made about filmmaking, defines his cinematic creed and integrates his two personas— Truffaut the critic and Truffaut the filmmaker. Ultimately, Day for Night and Love on the Run present a summary of Truffaut’s cinematic canon at the time of their production. The films, produced between 1957 and 1978, are dispersed along a timeline of twenty-one years, out of the twenty-six that Truffaut was a professional filmmaker, thereby representing his entire cinematic oeuvre. This chapter provides a chronological overview of Truffaut’s films, including a condensed synopsis of each of the eleven films (marked by an *) reviewed comprehensively in the following chapters. Regarding Truffaut’s other films, significant details that enhance one’s comprehension of his work have been elucidated here. A Visit (Une Visite, 1955); 8 minutes; B&W; 16mm This is Truffaut’s first film, produced independently. Truffaut wrote the screenplay and directed; his close childhood friend, Robert Lachenay, was the producer and assistant director, Jacques Rivette was the cinematographer; Alain Resnais was the editor, in conjunction with Truffaut. The film was shelved by Truffaut and never screened before an audience. It is not clear whether there is an extant copy. The Mischief Makers (Les Mistons, 1957); 17 minutes; B&W; 16mm* This film is an adaptation of a short story by Maurice Pons, Virginales.

A group of young boys follow Bernadette (Bernadette Lafont), a young 36

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girl in love for the first time. The death of her lover, Gérard (Gérard Blain), exposes the boys to the tragic connection between first love and death, forces them to grow up sooner than expected and ends their infatuation with Bernadette. Robert Lachenay produced this film as well.

A Story of Water (Une Histoire D’eau, 1958); 18 minutes; B&W; 16mm This is a short film dedicated to Mack Sennett.5 Filmed south of Paris during two days of flooding, A Story of Water is a comedy about a young couple trying to make their way through flooded fields and blocked roadways while discussing the weather, the rains, literature, and love. Written and edited in collaboration with Godard, the partially documentary film was constructed on the editing table, lacked a prescribed script and features the actors’ many improvised reactions to the floods and blockages. The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959); 94 minutes; B&W; Cinemascope* This is the first film in Truffaut’s autobiographical Antoine Doinel cycle and depicts the adolescence of thirteen-year-old Antoine (JeanPierre Léaud), who has difficulties coping with school and with his parents. His attempts to survive the complexities of the adult world involve Antoine in lies and theft, culminating in his father catching him trying to return a typewriter that he stole earlier from his office. His father turns him in to the police, and Antoine is sent to an institution for juvenile delinquents, from which he ultimately escapes. The film ends with an extended shot of Antoine running towards the open sea.

Sennett was a Hollywood actor, screenwriter, director, and producer, one of the first filmmakers to produce slapstick comedies. He discovered and was later the patron of some of the most significant filmmakers of the silentfilm era, including Chaplin and Lloyd. 37

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Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le Pianiste, 1960); 80 minutes; B&W; Cinemascope* This film was adapted from the David Goodis novel, Down There. Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour) is a barroom piano player fleeing from gangsters who are after his brothers, who betrayed them in the course of a hold-up. Lena (Marie Dubois), a waitress in the bar, helps Charlie and recognizes him as the formerly well-known concert pianist, Edouard Saroyan. He tells Lena the circumstances of his having left the stage as he discovered that he owed his career to the fact that his wife, Thérèse (Nicole Berger), had succumbed to his impresario’s sexual demands. Her sacrifice devastated their marriage and led to her committing suicide. Lena is trying to turn Charlie back to the famous Edouard Saroyan who he was before the tragedy. His attempt to resume his life and return to classical music through Lena comes to a tragic end when she is killed in a gunfight between his brothers and the gangsters.

Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim, 1961); 110 minutes; B&W; Cinemascope * This film was adapted from a novel of the same name by Henri-Pierre Roché. The film relates the story of Jules (Oskar Werner), Jim (Henri Serre) and Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), a threesome whose complex, convoluted relationship spanned decades, from the beginning of the twentieth century until the eve of the Second World War. Catherine challenges and defies bourgeois conventions regarding love, law and order and relationships. She forces the men in her life to confront their values in all fields. Catherine appears in the film as “an irrepressible force of nature, playing with the very sources of life,” as she is described by the narrator whose voice-over is interspersed throughout the film. Her dangerous game comes to an end when she drives her car off a bridge with Jim sitting beside her, while Jules looks on helplessly as the car sinks into the river’s depths.

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Antoine and Colette, Love at 20 (Antoine et Colette, L’Amour à Vingt Ans, 1962); 29 minutes; B&W; Cinemascope * This short film is the second in the Antoine Doinel cycle. Antoine is infatuated with Colette (Marie-France Pisier), who leads him on and at times allows him to believe that he has a chance of winning her heart but always rejects him at the moment of truth. At the end of the film, her boyfriend, Albert (Jean-François Adam), arrives at her home while Antoine is there as well.

The Soft Skin (La Peau Douce, 1964); 115 minutes; B&W; 35mm * In this film, Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly), a publisher and an acclaimed lecturer on Balzac, travels through Europe and conducts an extra-marital affair with Nicole (Françoise Dorléac), a stewardess whom he met on one of his lecture tours. After Pierre decides to end his marriage and leave his wife Franca (Nelly Benedetti) and daughter Sabine, Nicole refuses to establish an enduring relationship with him. The fact that Nicole leaves him does not prevent the tragic ending. The betrayed Franca, following her discovery of photos of Pierre with Nicole, shows up at his café with a hunting rifle. Just as he’s unsuccessfully trying to reach her by phone, she throws the incriminating pictures on the table and shoots him.

Fahrenheit 451 (Fahrenheit 451, 1966); 112 minutes; color; 35mm This film was adapted from a Ray Bradbury novel of the same name. It is a science-fiction film, in which Truffaut parted ways with the black and white that he had been so fond of and discovered the power of color in film. The film describes a future ruled by Firemen, whose job is to hunt down people hiding books, burn the books and send the people for re-education. The leading character is Montag (Oskar Werner), a Fireman who becomes an avid reader and revolutionary who tries to change the system from within, following a meeting with his neighbor, 39

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Clarisse (Julie Christie), one of the “book people.” The film ends with his failure to topple the regime through its agencies and his escape to the forests, where the underground book-lovers live. There he learns an entire book by heart, as do each of the “book people,” in order to keep it “alive.” The film was named for the temperature at which paper burns— 451°f., as was Bradbury’s book, and contains numerous literary intertexts,6 as well as many multi-faceted intertextual references. The Bride Wore Black (La Mariée Était En Noir, 1967); 107 minutes; color; 35mm This film was adapted from the novel of the same name by William Irish, 7

a pseudonym for Cornell Woolrich. Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau) sets out on a killing spree, with the intent of liquidating seven people. A stray bullet shot by one of the seven had killed her bridegroom, moments before their wedding. Julie’s vendetta is portrayed as the self-destructive journey of one woman among seven men.

Stolen Kisses (Baisers Volés, 1968); 91 minutes; color; 35mm * This is the third film in the Antoine Doinel cycle. Antoine, now twenty-two, is released from a military prison. He meets many women and switches jobs often, finally finding a measure of stability as a detective in a private investigator’s office. His crucial problem is one of identity. Antoine is torn between Christine (Claude Jade), a down-toearth woman with whom he has a chance of realizing his love, and Fabienne (Delphine Seyrig), a married, older woman who stirs his spirit and even moreso, his imagination, where, unfortunately, his love for 6

See Chapter 4 p. 69 for detailed explanation.

Irish/Woolrich also wrote the story on which the 1954 Hitchcock film Rear Window was based.

Note the intertextual ties between the Bride Wore Black and Quentin Tarantino’s 2004 film, Kill Bill, which was based on the same storyline. 40

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her remains impossible. Always in the background is Colette—an old love that had never been realized. Ultimately, Antoine makes do with the calm and security offered by Christine. Mississippi Mermaid (La Sirène Du Mississippi, 1969); 123 minutes; color; cinemascope* This film is an adaptation of the novella, Waltz into Darkness by William Irish (Cornell Woolrich). Marion (Catherine Deneuve) poses as Louis’ (Jean-Paul Belmondo) fiancé, to steal his fortune and leave hurriedly and secretly. Louis tracks her down in order to take revenge but falls in love with her. He kills the detective he had hired to find her and they flee together, until Louis discovers that Marion has tricked him once again and that she’s trying to poison him and make off with what’s left of his fortune. When he realizes that his life is in her hands and accepts his fate overwhelmingly and wholeheartedly, he succeeds in making her sincerely regret her actions, express her remorse and truly love him. The Wild Child (L’Enfant Sauvage, 1969); 85 minutes; B&W; 35mm This film is based on the genuine scientific reports written by Dr. Jean Itard in 1806, describing the process of bringing up Victor of Aveyron, a boy found living alone in a forest. It follows the attempts to socialize a wild creature, who had grown up among wolves since birth. The socialization process includes language instruction, training in the use of tools and implements, introduction of clothing, manners and living indoors for extended periods. In The Wild Child, Truffaut addresses issues that appear throughout his work: the relationship between savagery and civilization and between language and thought, the significance of learning processes and education and their bearing on human relations and erudition, as well as the disparity between freedom and the commitment that exists in interpersonal relationships, and between both states and culture. 41

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The film may be interpreted as an essay on filmmaking, a reading supported also by the fact that for the first time in his career as a filmmaker, Truffaut chose to act in the starring role, as Dr. Itard. The relationship between Itard/Truffaut and Victor/Jean-Pierre Cargol parallels the directoractor relationship, whereas the language instruction parallels the director’s cinematic instructions and his communication with his actors, on the one hand, and his audience on the other. Truffaut claimed that his decision to play the leading role was a natural one, because in this film he did in front of the camera what he usually did behind the camera. On another level, Itard/Truffaut’s relationship with Victor resonates with Truffaut’s relationship with Bazin, as well as with Jean-Pierre Léaud. Bazin was the civilized man who had trained the wild child, François Truffaut, twenty years earlier. Jean-Pierre Léaud was the young actor who had portrayed Antoine ten years earlier and he had a father-son/teacher-pupil relationship with Truffaut.

Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugal, 1970); 97 minutes; color; 35mm * This fourth film in the Antoine Doinel cycle focuses on the dysfunctional marriage of Antoine and Christine, his loyal girlfriend from Stolen Kisses. After the birth of their only child, Alphonse, Antoine is drawn to sexual escapades, has an affair with a Japanese lover, leaves Christine, but finally returns to hearth and home. Concurrent with his turbulent married life, Antoine is involved in a constant race, searching both for himself and for professional stability, which he channels toward writing his autobiography.

Two English Girls (Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent, 1971); 132 minutes; color; 35mm9 This film is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Henri9 The film was released in 1971 in an abridged 108-minute version and the fulllength version was re-released in 2002. 42

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Pierre Roché. Claude (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a writer and his widowed mother’s only son. Claude is fully under his mother’s control, even though he is an adult and living far away, in the British Isles. He is staying with an acquaintance of his mother’s, also a widow, who lives with her two daughters, Ann (Kika Markham), a sculptor, and Muriel (Stacey Tendeter). Claude falls in love with Muriel. His mother is against the match. Mother and son decide to compromise and reach an agreement whereby the young couple will part for a year, and they both return to their mothers’ homes. From this point, the plot navigates between meetings, partings, expectations and disappointments, as Claude is torn between three women: Ann, Muriel and his mother. In the end, Claude is left alone. The film features many of Truffaut’s recurring themes, such as an obsessive search for love, a character torn between two women who are both similar and different, an intensive, emasculating oedipal relationship, an absent father and an interest in art and its relationship to life.

Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (Une Belle Fille Comme Moi, 1972); 100 minutes; color; 35mm This fim was adapted from a novel of the same name by Henry Farrell. The film recounts the story of Camille Bliss (Bernadette Lafont), a convicted murderess serving a prison sentence, who is visited in prison by Stanislas Prévine (André Dussollier), a sociologist who wants to interview her for his research on female criminals. Camille tells Stanislas a story that she’s made up for the interview, according to which she has killed two men and tried to kill two others, all because she was abused and exploited in the past. Stanislas is fascinated by her personality, so different from his, and falls in love with her. Camille manipulates him and uses him to prove her questionable innocence and is released from prison as a result of his intercession. This time she does a better job of murdering her husband and tries to set Stanislas up as the murderer. At the film’s end, Stanislas is behind bars, without 43

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having published his book, and Camille is rich and free. Truffaut called Camille “Victor’s (from The Wild Child) older sister,” and to a great extent, her character resonates with that of Antoine in The 400 Blows. Contrary to Antoine, who really was a victim of his environment, Camille fights back and defeats the system. In this film as well, Truffaut confronts the intellectual, the academic researcher, the man of culture, with the wild creature, the rebel who breaks the law and defies constraints. Here too, he questions the relationship between reality and its reflection and addresses the way in which an attempt to tell a story influences the story itself, as well as the connection between civilization and savagery and the significance of language in that context. Here too the woman is a femme fatale, who seduces a man and ruins his life. The femme fatale originates from Hollywood’s film noir, but in contrast to the traditional Hollywood conclusion, Truffaut’s film ends on a comic note, with the triumph of illegal maneuvers and immoral characters.

Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine, 1973); 115 minutes; color; 35mm * Of all of Truffaut’s films, Day for Night is most obviously about filmmaking, as the entire plot unfolds on a film set. The dramatic purpose

is to finish shooting the film successfully, despite the

increasingly disruptive obstacles. Truffaut outlines the characters of the actors and crew, who bond into a family of sorts, which falls apart when the filming ends. Although the dramatic purpose is attained and the film concludes with a “happy end,” a trace of a sober and tender tone clouds the heavy price paid by the characters for their total immersion in the film, their personal exposure, and the partial obliteration of the borders between their private and professional lives.

10 The film’s dramatic purpose; as opposed to that of a particular character, this is a goal shared by all of the characters. The attempt, on the part of some of the characters, to attain or thwart the purpose sets the plot in motion and constitutes the binding link between all of its various elements. 44

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Meet Pamela, the film being shot in Day for Night, is the story of Pamela (Jacqueline Bisset), who falls in love with her future father-inlaw, Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont), after realizing that her fiancé, Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud), lives in his shadow. The film-within-thefilm ends like a Greek tragedy, when Pamela runs off with Alexandre and is killed in a road accident during their escape after which the father is shot dead by his son. Truffaut plays his real-life role of director, just as he played the leading role in The Wild Child. Jean-Pierre Léaud, the actor identified with Antoine Doinel, who is Truffaut’s cinematic alter ego, plays Alphonse. This double casting creates a confrontation between two facets of François Truffaut’s personality, an issue discussed at length in later chapters.

The Story of Adele H. (L’Histoire d’Adèle H., 1975); 110 minutes; color; 35mm This film is based on the authentic diaries left by Adèle (Isabelle Adjani), the daughter of French writer, Victor Hugo. It recounts the story of her obsessive, unrequited love for Lieutenant Pinson (Bruce Robinson). Adèle follows him all over the world, tears herself away from her family and loses her mind. Truffaut once again addresses obsessive love that leads to self-destruction and the influence of a relationship with an overshadowing parent on a person’s relations with the opposite sex.

Small Change (L’Argent de Poche, 1976); 105 minutes; color; 35mm Seventeen years after the release of The 400 Blows, Truffaut returned to the theme of childhood, growing up and the relations between children and adults. As opposed to The 400 Blows, which was made from the viewpoint of an abandoned, abused and angry young boy, Small Change focuses on the clear-eyed perspective of a mature person, who empathizes deeply with children and their troubles while 45

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simultaneously regarding adults and their world in a more humane and conciliatory light. The film lacks a central plot; the unity of action is replaced by a unity of theme while maintaining unity of time and space. The film tracks nearly one dozen children and their families and teachers, creating an entire world that follows the process of growing up. It navigates between diverse age groups and backgrounds, from a child of three, through puppy love and first kisses, and comes full circle with the closure between adulthood and childhood that takes place at the birth of one’s first child. This film also has its fatherless wild child, who is abused by his mother. Here too, cinemas play a significant role; but this time the cinema is a friendly venue of community entertainment rather than a refuge where one may escape one’s harsh reality. The Man Who Loved Women (L’Homme Qui Aimait Les Femmes, 1977); 118 minutes; color; 35mm Bertrand (Charles Denner), an obsessive collector of women, their pictures, and of the experiences enjoyed in their company, is writing a book about his romantic affairs. In the course of reliving his relationships and writing about them, he gradually attains some insight regarding his inability to form binding and significant relationship with a woman. At first, he believes that he has been involved with so many women because of his relationship with Delphine (Nelly Borgeaud), his most significant past love and the only one who was interesting and surprising. As he sees it, the only way to fill the empty space left after their breakup is to have relationships with many different women. Later, he realizes that his problem is related to his mother, who was an obsessive collector of men; in other words, he is repeating an acquired behavioral pattern. Later on, he reaches the conclusion that his obsessive need to feel loved was spawned by his mother’s rejecting him when he was a child.

As the date of his book’s publication nears, he meets Véra (Leslie Caron), his first love, who had initiated their separation, which he had experienced as rejection. At this point, he spurns his Freudian insight 46

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regarding his childhood relationship with his mother, and believes that the rejection he had experienced in his first love affair is the factor preventing him from forming a significant long-term relationship with a woman. He realizes that his first love was more important than all the women who came after her and that his book will not be complete without her. Geneviève (Brigitte Fossey), his publisher, refuses to alter the book, claiming that the significant reasons for writing a book should not be in the book itself, and that Véra should be the topic of his next book. Bertrand falls in love with Geneviève, and their relationship develops in a manner unlike his previous affairs. The insights he obtains with her help allow him, as it were, to give birth to his book and begin to change him. However, the forces generating his obsessive pursuit of women are out of control, more powerful than him and more intense than the psychological transformations that usually occur in films. Seeing a pretty girl across the street, he runs after her and is run over. In the hospital, attached to life-support systems, the sight of a nurse’s legs leads him to reach out to her with what’s left of his strength. He severs a drip, falls out of bed and dies. The film concludes at his funeral, attended only by women, which was also the opening scene. Geneviève, the only one there who knows about all the others, since she worked with him on his book, tells herself that Bertrand would have been happy to see all these women at his funeral. The film ends with the launching of his book, under the same title as the film: The Man Who Loved Women. On many levels, Truffaut’s film is Bertrand’s book. However, the film deviates from the book in that his death, his affair with Geneviève, as well as his love for Véra, whose rejection of him led him to write the book, appear in the film but not in the book, just as life deviates from art, even when a work of art faithfully expresses a real-life occurrence. In The Man Who Loved Women, once again, Truffaut addresses the themes of an obsessive passion for women that lead to death, complex relations with a mother, absent fathers, as well as the ramifications of all of these phenomena on a man’s ability to form interpersonal

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relationships. The film also deals with the relationships between art and life, between the cinema and literature and between biography and art. At the beginning of the film, Truffaut gives poetic expression to the secret charm of the women in his films when Bertrand says “Women’s legs are compasses which measure the globe in all directions, giving it its balance and harmony.”

The Green Room (La Chambre Verte, 1978); 94 minutes; color; 35mm This film is an adaptation of the Henry James short story, The Altar of the Dead. Julien Davenne (François Truffaut) devotes his life to the dead. As opposed to many of Truffaut’s films, in which an obsessive passion for women leads to self-destruction and death, in this film the object of the leading character’s obsessive love is death itself—the list of dead people who were dear to Julien and whom he had admired. The green room is Julien’s secret shrine, the room he lovingly built in honor of his dead. Each dead person has his picture and a candle, which he makes sure to light and replace when necessary. Julien’s dead are people with whom he had been extremely close, such as his wife and other friends, alongside Truffaut’s dead: acquaintances and close friends who died during his lifetime, including, for example, the actress Françoise Dorléac, who starred in The Soft Skin, as well as dead people that Truffaut and Julien had in common, cultural icons such as the writers Honoré de Balzac and Henry James, who wrote the story on which The Green Room is based; Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, the director Jean Cocteau, and the musician Maurice Jaubert, whose music was incorporated into the film’s soundtrack. One day Julien meets Cécilia Mandel (Nathalie Baye), a widow visiting her husband’s grave at a cemetery that Julien frequents. He responds to a human relationship for the first time, but instead of Cécilia drawing him away from death and returning him to the land of the living, he draws her into his cult of the dead. The film concludes with Julien starving himself to death, thereby enabling the addition of the last memorial candle required to 48

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complete the arrangement. As he had told Cécilia, one more candle was needed, in other words, one additional dead person, in order to complete the structure he had erected in the green room. After his death, Cécilia lights that last, missing candle. Inez Hedges (1991) proffers an interesting intertextual interpretation regarding the connections between The Green Room and the Orpheus myth, Jean Cocteau’s 1949 film, Orphée, and his 1959 film, Le Testament d’Orphée. The reasoning behind Truffaut’s decision to play the leading role in this film is less obvious than it was in The Wild Child or Day for Night. Apparently, the film touched him on profound emotional levels. In some ways, The Green Room is an emotional autobiography that represents a crucial aspect of his past life at certain significant times, despite the fact that the only biographical details that appear in the film are the pictures of people who were important to him, as well as influential cultural icons with whom he had maintained a dialogue throughout his work.

Love on the Run (L’Amour en Fuite, 1979); 94 minutes; color; 35mm * This is the fifth and final Antoine Doinel film. Antoine comes full circle regarding his past, especially the significant women in his life. Three women from past films stand out here: his mother, now deceased, but Antoine happens to meet one of her old lovers, the very one he had caught kissing his mother on the street when he had been playing truant from school in The 400 Blows; Colette, the first girl he had loved and who had rejected him; and Christine, who has been involved in his life since Stolen Kisses. In Love on the Run, they divorce when their son Alphonse is nine years old. Antoine is involved in a new relationship, with Sabine (Dorothée). He loves Sabine and wants to continue the relationship but finds it hard to commit himself, so she tries to break it off. Only after Antoine has reached closure with his past does he find his way back to Sabine. In this film, Antoine finally finds a career that suits him, as a proofreader at a printer’s, meanwhile writing his autobiography, The Salads of Love, which is actually his own Antoine 49

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Doinel cycle. Just as Antoine settles scores with his past, Truffaut uses cinematic material from past films, in an innovative cinematic maneuver, the significance of which will be discussed in later chapters. The Last Metro (La Dernier Métro, 1980); 128 minutes; color; 35mm This film focuses on a theater group working on a production during the German occupation. Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) is the group’s leading actress, as well as its artistic director during the absence of Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent), her Jewish husband. Marion has a secret—her husband is hiding in the theater’s cellar and directing the theater and the play through her. Lucas controls the artistic directing of the play through the sounds he hears from his hiding place, without seeing the actors. Marion hires a new actor, Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu), but does not know that he is also a member of the French Resistance. Although she agrees with Bernard’s anti-Nazi position, his membership in the underground poses a threat to the theater and puts Lucas in jeopardy. Within these complex relationships, Marion and Bernard begin an affair, which Lucas, the director experienced in interpreting unseen realities, realizes through intuition. The film ends with the liberation of Paris from the Nazi occupation and Lucas leaving his hiding place. The theater puts on a contemporary play, and when it is awarded a standing ovation from the audience, Marion is standing on stage between Bernard and Lucas and the three of them take a bow. Once again, The Last Metro addresses obsessive love, love triangles, the relationship between art and reality and the various dimensions of artistic representation. One cannot ignore the fact that the leading character in Mississippi Mermaid was also named Marion and was also played by Catherine Deneuve, and she too led a double life, one revealed and the other underground. The Woman Next Door (La Femme d’à côté, 1981); 106 minutes; color; 35mm 50

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Truffaut returns to his obsessive-love-till-death theme with the film’s motto being: “neither with you nor without you.” Mathilde (Fanny Ardant) had painfully broken off her turbulent relationship with Bernard (Gérard Depardieu) eight years before the film begins. Having recovered from a nervous breakdown, she marries Philippe (Henri Garcin). The couple move into a new house, not knowing that Bernard, who is now married to Arlette (Michèle Baumgartner), lives next door and has a young son. They keep their former relationship a secret from their present spouses. Despite the fact that they’ve agreed not to renew their affair, their mutual attraction is more powerful than they are and prevents them from standing by their decision to part. When their spouses find out, Bernard wants to cut off all contact, but Mathilde will not leave him alone. The film ends with Mathilde seducing him into one last meeting, where she shoots him dead and then kills herself. This tale of desperate love is framed between a prologue and an epilogue telling a secondary plot, shot in a documentary style. Mrs. Jouve (Véronique Silver), an older, handicapped woman who owns a local sports club, where Bernard and Mathilde used to meet, recounts the events to a TV reporter, while an ambulance crew is removing the bodies in the background. Mrs. Jouve’s own story is integrated into the interview; her handicapped state is the result of an unsuccessful suicide attempt, because of a parallel, desperate unrequited love. Thus, once again, Truffaut places his queries regarding obsessive love and destructive relations between men and women in the reflexive context of the significance of language and narrative.

Confidentially Yours (Vivement Dimanche!, 1983); 111 minutes; B&W; 35mm This was adapted from the Charles Williams book, Long Saturday Night. Truffaut’s last film was shot, as were his early films, in black and white, in the film noir style, and once again, like Shoot the Piano Player, 51

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combines tragedy, farce, drama and comedy. Julien Vercel (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a real-estate agent, is accused of murdering his unfaithful wife and one of her lovers. His secretary, Barbara (Fanny Ardant), believes he has been falsely accused and starts her own investigation to find proof of his innocence. Meanwhile, Julien is hiding in the cellar of his office and watching the world go by through a small hatch. Finally, Barbara succeeds in proving her employer’s innocence and wins his love.

One should note this chapter includes no more than short overviews of the plots of Truffaut’s works, and one should remember that Truffaut himself did not attach all that much importance to a film’s plot, or as he put it: The main complaint against some critics – and a certain type of criticism – is that too seldom do they speak about cinema as such. The scenario of a film is not the film; all films are not psychological. Every critic should take to heart Jean Renoir’s remark, ‘All great art is abstract’11 (Truffaut, 1978, (1975), p. 12).

11 Italics in the original. 52

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Cinema today is in the hands of intellectuals, that is to say, people who in other circumstances might have written novels or plays, and who a dozen years ago would doubtless have preferred to write novels or plays out of fear of the technical problems involved in making a film. We are in the age of author-cinema.â&#x20AC;? (Truffaut & Moussy, 1969, p. 227)

Franรงois Truffaut in Israel (1980); Ronit Shany (photographer)

3 Collector of Culture Years before he became a filmmaker, the young FranĂ§ois Truffaut was an obsessive collector of the raw material that later nourished his work. As a child, Truffaut stole posters and movie advertisements from the cinemas he frequented. He collected newspaper cuttings, which he sorted by author and subject and then filed. When he began writing, he kept files of every correspondence, including the most banal. Apparently, his obsessive collecting, sorting, conserving, and filing were a means of granting meaning to an arbitrary life and creating significance and continuity as well as battling oblivion and death. In addition to his actual files, it seems that young FranĂ§ois had a treasure trove of things he had read, seen or heard, filed away in his mind. His extensive, lifelong correspondence, among other sources, provides partial evidence as to the manner in which the young Truffaut absorbed, internalized, and then processed information for reuse. An impressive anthology of Truffautâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s letters, beginning in 1945, when he was thirteen years old, and through 1984, the year he died at fifty-two, was published in 1988. In his early letters, prior to his career as a film critic or filmmaker, Truffaut produced linguistic patterns based on texts he had read or heard in films and utilized them to express himself. He was extremely knowledgeable, primarily due to the extensive number of books he had read and the thousands of films he had seen. His usage of texts familiar both to himself and to his correspondents served several purposes. At times he found it culturally entertaining, 57

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at times these texts contained complex statements or coded messages comprehensible solely to his addressee and himself. In all of these instances, he cultivated the use of borrowed texts to the point that it became second nature and the outstanding characteristic of his professional, personal and intimate correspondence. It would seem that Truffaut, quite early in his career, felt that he was writing for posterity, even in his most intimate correspondence. Therefore, his use of preexisting texts requires research and examination. In June 1951, Truffaut, then a nineteen-year-old enlisted man, wrote to his close friend Robert Lachenay: Soon I’m going to find myself in the same situation as Jean Gabin 12

at the beginning of that film set in Le Havre, but in my case I’ll have clothes, a job, friends I can trust (Truffaut, 1990, p. 56.). Thus, for example, Truffaut made use of a simple ploy in order to outwit the military censors and inform his friend that he intended to desert the army—an intention that he soon realized. Moreover, since his friendship with Lachenay was based on their shared love of films, this form of address was actually a personal appeal that created a sense of intimacy between the two friends. Furthermore, Truffaut’s style may be interpreted as the longing of a lonely young man to be in an alternate world, to live the lives of the cinematic heroes with whom he identified and who provided him with a refuge from the difficult reality in which he found himself. Truffaut as a young man, isolated and lost, defined his identity through Jean Gabin, who, in the film, portrays the character of a destitute deserter who assumes the identity of a painter who had committed suicide, and is later murdered because of his love for a woman. This definition of identity at such an early stage in his life defined his work throughout his career, in terms of content as well as reliance on a cinematic 12 This refers to Marcel Carné’s film Port of Shadows (Quai des Brumes, 1938). 58

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canon. Eleven years later, in June 1962, in a letter to his friend Helen 13

Scott Truffaut signed his name as Truffaldino , François (ibid. p. 188), reinventing himself this time as a literary-theatrical character, a humorous allusion that once again expresses Truffaut’s constant desire to merge with imaginary characters. In a letter to Helen Scott, written in July 1962, Truffaut fused theatrical and intimate-erotic discourses when describing his financial indecision regarding the production of a film, his doubts expressed by Shakespeare’s existential question, “To be or not to be:” “My company, Carrosse, can co-produce a third or a half of the film,15 but no more than that; who can we get into bed with? That is the question” (ibid, p. 195).16 For Truffaut, as this quote indicates, making the film Fahrenheit 451 was an existential question of “to be or not to be.” His use of sexual innuendo alludes to the corrupt aspects of the filmmaking industry, as well as to an additional prevalent feature of Truffaut’s films: the blurring of the boundaries between women as objects of love and works of art. Les Films du Carrosse (Chariot Films), the name that Truffaut chose for his production company, which produced all of his films since The Mischief Makers, is an example of the pronounced significance that he ascribed to words and names and their intertextual relationships. In addition to comparing a production company to a chariot, a simile that Truffaut employed frequently both in his writing as a film critic and in his film Day for Night, the name alludes to Jean Renoir’s 1953 film The Golden Coach (Le Carrosse d’or). In appropriating the name of the film, 13 Helen Scott was Truffaut’s collaborator and translator in his book-length interview with Hitchcock. 14 A hypocritical and untrustworthy servant in Commedia dell’Arte. 15 Truffaut is referring to the film Fahrenheit 451, which was finally produced four years later. 16 The phrase “That is the question” appears in the original in English, while the rest of the letter is in French. 59

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Truffaut was declaring himself, as early as 1957, as Renoir’s successor in French filmmaking and perhaps even internationally. There are those who postulate that Truffaut’s compulsion to merge with films from his past was so overwhelming that he named his two eldest daughters, consciously or unconsciously, after heroines from films that he found especially significant. His first daughter, born in 1959, was named 17

Laura, after the enigmatic character in Otto Preminger’s 1944 film Laura.

His second daughter Eva, born in 1961, was so named following the 1950 Joseph Mankiewicz’s film All About Eve. In addition to the cinematic references inherent in his daughters’ names and that of his production company, Truffaut, in his letters, grants his residence the status of a significant cinematic space. In May 1965, having moved to a new address, Truffaut wrote to Helen Scott, describing his new life: th

I’ve been living for 3 days now in the Rue de Passy, on the 10 floor with a terrace overlooking Paris. It has an (Eiffel) tower window (ibid, p. 270).

In the original French, tower window was written as fenêtre sur tour, an allusion to Fenêtre sur Cour, the French title of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window. On another occasion, in an October 1969 letter to Gilles Jacob, Truffaut quoted the cinematic archetype from the 1941 film Citizen Kane: There you have, if not the truth, at least my truth; actually, I quite enjoy this kind of imbroglio, when, as a result of something made 17 Different versions refer to the names Truffaut gave his daughters. In their biography, De Baecque and Toubiana approach the question with caution. They assert that Laura was named after her grandmother and refrain from referring to the origins of Eva’s name (De Baecque & Toubiana, 1999, p. 132). Other sources from the literature on Truffaut (e.g. Bergan, 2008, p. ix) confirm the interpretation stated above. To add to the controversy, one cannot ignore the fact that Laura was the name of one of Balzac’s sisters. Truffaut’s extensive use of quotes from Balzac will be addressed in later chapters. 60

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public, one comes to realize that 80 people have been toying with the same idea without knowing it so that one could almost write a book about it à la ‘rosebud’18 (ibid., p. 338). At a certain stage, Truffaut began using his own films as a textual reservoir of quotes and references. In December 1964, Truffaut began a letter to Helen Scott with “My dear Catherine,” ending with, “regards to Jim,19 Jules Truffaut,” (ibid, p. 258-259). Once again, Truffaut blurs the lines between living persons and imaginary characters, referring in this case to one of his own films (Jules and Jim in this case). In a January 1971 letter to the film distributor Roger Diamantis, Truffaut refers in writing, for the first time, to his use of the intertextual mechanism in his films. The letter refers to the thesis that Diamantis, whose advisor was Christian Metz, had submitted to the Institute for Advanced Cinematic Studies in Paris. It seems that Truffaut avoided Diamantis’ direct questions; however, he did provide him with a short overview of his films from his point of view. Referring to The 400 Blows, he writes: Please also note, during the scene in the police station, the arrival of the three prostitutes, each of whom makes a remark on how filthy police stations are, and note how the three remarks were specifically chosen to remind the spectator of fairy-tales (Goldilocks and the Three Bears, for example) (ibid, p. 357). In the same letter, in reference to The Bride Wore Black, Truffaut writes: Julie, who symbolizes vengeance, dresses up to seduce her victims before killing them off. …She dresses as Diana, the goddess of hunting, for Charles Denner, the painter – and she kills him,

18 The sled Rosebud is the ultimate, iconic embodiment of the gap between reality and the multiple interpretations that result from the proliferation of points of view in the film Citizen Kane. 19 Jim Harrison, Helen’s friend. 61

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appropriately, with a bow and arrow. This last detail is an allusion to a book by Pierre Klossowski, Le Bain de Diane (ibid, p. 358). This mechanism is ingrained in Truffaut to such an extent that he seeks the significance of allusions even when referring to his colleagues’ work. Thus, in a 1968 letter to Alfred Hitchcock, after having read his new screenplay for the film Frenzy (1972), Truffaut included a detailed and lengthy critique. Among other things, he inquired: “Do you call him Hinckel20 because it was Chaplin’s name for Hitler in The Great Dictator?” (ibid, p. 321) In other words, in Truffaut’s worldview, it was unthinkable that a text might recall a previous text inadvertently. According to his understanding, it must have been used deliberately, the filmmaker fully aware of its meaning. These representative examples, as well as others that systematically and progressively appear throughout Truffaut’s correspondence, allude to the possibility that a comprehensive and fundamental study of his works and the identification of instances in which he reused pre-existing texts, may shed new light on his films and prove conducive to the comprehension of film in general. In the following chapters in part II, we will attempt to define the theoretical tools necessary for conducting an analysis of this sort, before we approach Truffaut’s films.

20 One of the characters in Hitchcock’s screenplay.

For chapters 4-18 visit Prof. Preminger's AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE