François Truffaut

Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015)

André Crous

Sadly, another case where it is (far) better to read the book than watch the movie.

hitchcock-truffautUSA/France
2*

Director:
Kent Jones
Screenwriters:
Kent Jones
Serge Toubiana
Directors of Photography:
Nick Bentgen, Daniel Cowen, Eric Gautier, Mihai Malaimare Jr., Lisa Rinzler and Genta Tamaki

Running time: 80 minutes

It may share a title with one of the most accessible studies of a filmmaker ever published, but in his documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, director Kent Jones (assisted here on the screenplay by Truffaut biographer Serge Toubiana) forgot to take a page from the very book with which it shares a title. As a result, it fails to present its facts, few and far between though they may be, in a compelling way.

What we end up with here is a messy assortment of thoughts and reflections on the Master of Suspense, countless extracts from his films (none of which is indicated to the uninitiated) and a mish-mash of audio excerpts taken from the legendary eight-day interview back in 1962 between the young but ultimately immensely influential French film critic/director François Truffaut and the ageing sage who had been thrilling the masses for many decades with his tales of murder but whose status as one of the cinema’s great auteurs was still underappreciated, Alfred Hitchcock.

In the film, we meet 10 directors, among whom only David Fincher proclaims a personal connection with the book, first published in 1966, which contains a wide-ranging discussion between the two cinephiles of all of Hitchcock’s films up to that point, just four short of the ultimate tally by the time he passed away in 1980. The conversation, which sadly was not filmed but only recorded, was facilitated by the bilingual Helen Scott, who gets only one shout-out here without any further information about her. Truffaut spoke no English, and Hitchcock spoke no French, so Scott interpreted back and forth between them from morning till late afternoon every day for more than a week.

Besides Fincher, some of the most loquacious speakers here are French directors Arnaud Desplechin and Olivier Assayas, with speed talker Martin Scorsese also called upon to share his views of Hitchcock’s most famous works. However, it is wholly unclear why these particular filmmakers and their ilk, including Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and the little-known James Grey, are recounting their impressions. Had we listened to someone like Brian de Palma, or Steven Spielberg, perhaps we could have learned something about tension, art and entertainment, but while these particular filmmakers are amiable enough, it remains a mystery why they were chosen to share their opinions of Hitchcock. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, they’re no François Truffaut.

Time and again, we return to the question of whether Hitchcock was an entertainer or an artist, a doubt he even expressed to Truffaut. Predictably, the film leans very heavily towards the latter, as was the intention of Truffaut at the time: Along with his colleagues at the Cahiers du cinéma film monthly, he praised the Hollywood-based British director for being the force that drives every one of his films, in other words, for being an “auteur”.

According to Truffaut, the work of an auteur might not always be good, but it is always better than the work of a non-auteur (he used the examples of French filmmakers Jean Renoir and Jean Delannoy as representatives of these two respective kinds of directors).

Hitchcock/Truffaut, unsure of its own raison d’être, turns towards armchair psychoanalysis in its second half, as the directors, most of whom are too young to have met Hitchcock, speculate about the fetish objects in Hitch’s films. Fortunately, we are spared any significant amount of discussion about the blonde actresses he employed, but the topic of dreams does come up, and it is truly puzzling that there is no mention of Spellbound, which was Hitchcock’s big “dream” film and also dealt very cynically with psychoanalysis.

Most frustrating is an extended sequence that encompasses an analysis of Vertigo, during which we learn precious little, except that the film works not because of its narrative, which is deeply flawed and more than a little silly, but because it is, in the words of Scorsese, “poetry”. Such bland statements about Hitchcock the artist, as opposed to Hitchcock the mass entertainer, bring absolutely nothing to our understanding of the director’s undeniable appeal.

What would seem to be the most important point of discussion is one that is mentioned all too briefly: Hitchcock’s problem with realism, especially following the brutal reality of World War II.

Scorsese admits that Vertigo has a “spirit of realism”, but that the film cannot possibly be described as realistic. This is in fact a larger issue in the director’s works and ultimately led to his ex-communication from the world of entertainment because of his stubborn refusal to renounce outdated techniques such as rear projection. This gimmick, often utilised in studio pictures during the age of black-and-white cinema, made Marnie — released in 1964 in between the French New Wave and in the middle of the British New Wave, both of which focused on the lives of people in the middle or the bottom half of society and whose films were shot on location — look downright laughable.

Truffaut, who was just 30 years of age at the time he conducted the interview in 1962, is always a magnetic speaker, his enthusiasm for Hitchcock palpable, and it is a shame Jones only very superficially compares an incident in the Frenchman’s début feature, The 400 Blows (Les 400 coups) with a famous story Hitchcock often told. But he fails to share with the audience, for example, that Truffaut asked himself “What would Hitch do?” when he shot the suspenseful scene in which the rebellious Antoine Doinel’s mother shows up at school to confront him about his lies.

It is all well and good to assemble a few friends to talk about a man who was a giant in the industry before they came along, but this film does not contribute to a deeper understanding of the man, his life or his films. At best, it may serve as a starting point for students who need to write a film review for their high-school English class. Those who did not know anything about Hitchcock or Truffaut before watching the film might very well learn the basics, but for everyone else, this film offers less than the bare minimum. Go out and buy the book instead.

Viewed at the San Sebastián International Film Festival 2015

The Wild Child (1970)

André Crous

The Wild ChildFrance
4.5*

Director:
François Truffaut
Screenwriters:
François Truffaut
Jean Gruault
Director of Photography: 
Néstor Almendros

Running time: 87 minutes

Original title: L‘enfant sauvage

The Wild Child is one of François Truffaut’s best films, and the key to grasping its significance for Truffaut himself lies in the film’s opening dedication: “To Jean-Pierre Léaud”. Léaud was Truffaut’s alter ego in his feature film début, The 400 Blows, in which he starred as the 12-year-old Antoine Doinel. The character of Doinel in this film had much in common with the young Léaud, and Truffaut took the actor under his wing, eventually becoming a father figure to the troubled youth.

In The Wild Child, Truffaut stars as Jean Itard, a physician who is confident that he can make a cultured human being out of a young boy who has spent his entire childhood fending for himself in the woods. The story is based on a real case treated by Itard of a boy found in the French countryside in 1798.

This treatment may also be described as training, and it is this uncertainty about the exact nature of the procedure that makes the film so interesting, for, while Itard is not presented with very much complexity of character, he uses his experience with deaf-mute children to instruct the young boy, whom he names Victor. When Victor is discovered, he is dirty, seems to be deaf and employs the most basic of gestures to express himself since he never learned to use his mouth for anything besides eating and drinking.

It is impressive to watch Victor’s development, which Itard is in a rush to complete, but which naturally takes much longer than he anticipates. In the process, Itard is rightfully scolded by his housekeeper, Madame Guérin: “You want him to catch up in one fell swoop!” Also, since Victor has no experience with the ways of people, he acts out whenever he is frustrated by dropping to the ground, waving his arms and flailing his legs about in a way that reminds one of a seizure. If he encounters resistance from someone, he is also prone to sinking his teeth into an unsuspecting arm. Itard has many clever strategies to conduct his experiments and gain knowledge about Victor’s capacity for learning, but very often he seems to ignore the bridges between one stage and the next, for example, the difference between a picture of a book, the word “book” and the book itself, which Itard takes as something quite self-evident.

Truffaut is excellent as Itard, who shows a remarkable level of commitment, patience and humanity throughout, even when it is very difficult to judge what the wild-eyed boy wants from him. We can understand both of them, both their positions, and the reason for their frustration with each other is clear because there is no easy way to bridge the communication gap that divides them. It is clear that Itard observes without taking as much trouble to learn Victor’s customs as Victor takes to learn his.

The film is a sequence of small incidents charting Itard’s progress with Victor and there are a few very moving moments that make our and Itard’s hearts beat fast with excitement at the possibility of rehabilitation. Unfortunately, the film does not sufficiently address the nagging question of whether it is appropriate to try to integrate the child into society, nor does it even question the legitimacy of erasing the useful skills that Victor had acquired on his own in nature. These are important questions in the background that Truffaut could easily have touched on, but he aimed for a more inspirational film, albeit based on historical documents.

Almendros’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography is perfectly suited to the story, as is Vivaldi’s “Mandolin Concerto”, which accompanies most major events in the plot. Truffaut engages our attention throughout, as actor and as director, but one scene that fails to convince takes place when the wild boy is captured at the beginning of the film. While dogs bark and growl on the soundtrack, the images we see are of the boy’s arm grasped very gently by a dog’s mouth, and if the sound were removed, it would appear that the two were just amicably horsing around.

Jean-Pierre Cargol, who stars as Victor, the titular Wild Child, never overplays his part and is a great attribute to the film. While almost never uttering a sound, Victor will find sympathy with most viewers because of our curiosity to see the development of a boy for whom most experiences are “firsts”, including the use of clothes, shoes, a spoon, a mirror and many others. He also displays many remarkably touching characteristics in a subtle way, such as his love for the countryside that is made clear when he goes to the window every time he takes a sip of water. The film is a touching tribute by Truffaut to the boy he wanted to teach about the world, and even if it was always just a work in progress, The Wild Child makes it all somehow seem worthwhile.