Casting
a Human Spell: The Films of François Truffaut
Northwest
Film Center at the Guild Theatre 829 SW 9th Ave., 221-1156
Aug. 5-31 $6
Film lovers are sick people.
--François Truffaut
When people find out how I make a living, they invariably
ask the same question: "So, you write about movies, but
don't you ever want to make them?" The answer has always
been, and most likely will always be, no. Besides watching
the film business completely destroy several close friends,
I truly believe that unless you have something vital and
fresh to say, don't bother picking up a camera.
We haven't had a film critic turn filmmaker since Peter
Bogdanovich helped jump-start the New American Cinema movement
in the early '70s with films like The Last Picture Show
and Paper Moon; now we have video clerks crossing
over instead. In the late '60s, Bogdanovich wrote about
movies and, more importantly, interviewed legends like John
Ford, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles. His transition to filmmaker
came at a time when American cinema was stale and needed
a booster shot. Bogdanovich looked backward about 15 years,
dropped his reporter's hat into the garbage and helped energize
American cinema in the same ways that the French New Wave
scribes-turned-filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and François
Truffaut altered French cinema during the late '50s and
early '60s.
Godard and Truffaut got tired of bitching about what was
wrong with conventional, dry and literary-driven French
cinema in the mid-'50s, so they picked up cameras, made
their own films and basically altered the way people saw
movies. Godard's Breathless and Truffaut's The
400 Blows, the landmark features of the French New Wave,
were responsible for freeing filmmakers from narrative devices
more than six decades old. Greater emphasis was placed on
character instead of well-structured plot lines. Location
shooting and hand-held cameras combined to make movies easy
and affordable to make and gave them an unrestricted feel.
The French New Wave changed the world, and in the 1960s
amateur dreamers made hundreds of low-budget films.
While it was Godard who raised the intellectual flag of
the French New Wave, it was Truffaut's films that were most
viewed by international audiences. Truffaut's early films
are emotional, personal stories filled with his self-consciously
enthusiastic love of cinema. For Truffaut, making films
was compulsory, a personal expression, essential for both
survival and maintaining sanity. And he lived his life as
if it were one long movie.
Truffaut first found recognition in 1954, when Cahiers
du Cinéma published his article "A Certain Tendency
of French Cinema." In it, Truffaut strongly attacked the
French cinema for its bland, artless "tradition of quality"
and, more importantly, directors who failed to use the medium
in a personal way. The article is a seminal piece in film
history; it planted the revolutionary seed for the New Wave
and is the basis for Truffaut's auteur theory that the director
has sole responsibility for a film and that directors' personal
views can be observed in all of their works.
Understanding Truffaut's writing is one of the keys to
appreciating his work. Both his films and his writing contain
sentiment, giddy passion, poignancy and a tendency toward
retrospection. His most passionate critical pieces were
often obituaries of his favorite directors. He wanted to
understand the person behind the camera as presented through
their camera lens.
During the first half of his career, Truffaut's youthful
eagerness was overwhelming. Films like Jules and Jim
and Shoot the Piano Player are films to feel rather
than simply watch. His joy for and love of movies dominate
his early work. Watch the first few minutes of Jules
and Jim, for example: Truffaut uses jarring jump-cuts,
as if he can't wait to get into the next scene and triumphant
music as two friends discuss literature. This is the work
of a man celebrating not only life but movies as life. It's
a sensibility aligned with his critical roots and perhaps
the main reason so many of us film reviewers still adore
Truffaut.
The following represent just the few highlights, in chronological
order, of the Truffaut retrospective running at the Northwest
Film Center this month:
The 400 Blows (1958)
Truffaut's feature debut
was this partially autobiographical account of Antoine Doinel
(Jean-Pierre Leaud played Truffaut's fictitious alter-ego),
a rebellious 13-year-old boy who is forced into petty crime
by neglectful parents and teachers. It's been over-praised
as a French New Wave relic, but the film still possesses
a remarkable freshness. Its mixture of wide-eyed innocence,
unsentimental warmth and perceptiveness make it one of the
greatest cinematic explorations of childhood. Truffaut continued
charting Doinel through four more films, using Leaud throughout.
Love at 20 (the "Antoine and Collette" chapter), Stolen
Kisses, Bed and Board and Love on the Run
are all playing during the festival, but each lacks the
personality and eagerness so evident in the first installment.
7 pm Monday-Wednesday, Aug. 23-25.
Shoot the Piano Player (1959)
Less personal than
The 400 Blows, Truffaut's second feature stands as
one of his most interesting and entertaining genre experiments,
a prime example of what the French New Wave was all about.
It's part gangster film, part love story and wholly unpredictable.
The absurd plot--a lonely cafe pianist gets involved with
mobsters--is secondary to the number of jarring mood shifts
made within the film's structure.
9:30 pm Monday-Wednesday, Aug. 23-25.
Jules and Jim (1961)
Truffaut's masterpiece about
a strange ménage à trois in the early
20th century is simultaneously an exhilarating love poem
to the notion of "young love" and to cinema itself. The
early scenes use whipping pans, frantic editing, boisterous
music and fluid, mobile camera work, capturing Truffaut
at the height of his power and passion. Again, as in Shoot
the Piano Player, the director shows his ability to
capture a range of emotions. The film zooms quickly from
whimsical comedy to tragic pathos. It's ultimately a celebration
of the spontaneity and endless possibilities of film.
7 pm Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 5-8.
The Wild Child (1969)
Another period piece, The
Wild Child explores an 18th-century scientist who attempts
to socially condition a boy found in the woods. This may
be Truffaut's most philosophical work, but to his credit,
he keeps the tone lucid, witty and remarkably moving, using
a pseudo-documentary feel.
7 pm Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 19-22.
Two English Girls (a.k.a. Anne and Muriel) (1971)
Like
Jules and Jim, this is a profoundly moving account
of a doomed love triangle. Truffaut again examines the thin
line between art and "reality." The central character is
a writer, and his meditative internal monologue continually
aligns the film's events with other fictional possibilities.
7 pm Monday-Wednesday, Aug. 9-11.
Day for Night (1972)
Truffaut's elegy to film remains
one of the sweetest, funniest movies about movies ever made.
It's a candid look at what goes on behind a movie set, but
more importantly, Truffaut essentially tells us what he's
been telling us for years: Cinematic illusion is far more
interesting than everyday reality, and in fact, the two
can't be separated.
9:15 pm Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 12-15.
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Willamette Week | originally
published August 11,
1999
|
