alain resnais

354 Pages·2008·54.29 MB·English

THE
FILMS
IN MY LIFE
Francois Truffaut
translated by
Leonard Mayhew
A TOUCHSTONE BOOK
Published by SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
New York
Copyright Q 1975 by Flammarion
Translation Copyright 0 1978 by Simon & Schuster, Inc
All rights reserved
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form
This Touchstone Edition, 1985
Published by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Simon & Schuster Building
Rockefeller Center
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TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Eve Metz
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 P b k
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Truffaut, Franqois
The Filnis in My Life.
Translation of Les Films De Ma Vie.
Includes Index
1 Moving-Pictures-Reviews. I. Title
PN1995 T713 791 43'7 77-29036
ISBN 0-671-24663-1 Pbk.
CONTENTS
Francois Truffaut (1932-1984), ix
What Do Critics Dream About?, 3
I THE BIG SECRET
Jean Vigo Is Dead at Twenty-nine, 23
Abel Gance.
Napoleon, 29
La Tour de Nesle, 33
A Jean Renoir Festival, 36
The Whiteness of Carl Dreyer, 48
Lubitsch Was a Prince, 50
Charlie Chaplin
The Great Dictator, 54
A King in New York, 57
Who Is Charlie Chaplin?, 60
God Bless John Ford, 63
Fritz Lang in America, 64
Frank Capra, the Healer, 69
Howard Hawks-
Scarface, 70
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 7 1
Land of the Pharaohs, 72
Joseph Von Sternberg Jet Pilot, 74
Alfred Hitchcock:
Rear Window, 77
To Catch a Thief, 80
The Wrong Man, 83
The Birds, 86
Frenzy, 88
I THE GENERATION OF THE TALKIES: The
Americans
Robert Aldrich:
Kiss Me Deadly, 93
CONTENTS
Vera Cruz, 95
The Big Knife, 98
William Beaudine: The Feathered Serpent, 10 1
Budd Boetticher: The Killer Is Loose, 102
George Cukor. It Should Happen to You, 104
Samuel Fuller: Verboten, 107
Elia Kazan
Baby Doll, 110
A Face in the Crowd, 11 3
Stanley Kubrick Paths of Glory, 1 16
Charles Laughton: The Night of the Hunter, 119
Mervyn LeRoy: The Bad Seed, 12 1
Anatole Litvak: Anastasia, 12 3
Joshua Logan- Picnic, 125
Sidney Lumet: Twelve Angry Men, 127
Joseph Mankiewicz- The Barefoot Contessa, 129
Anthony Mann: Men in War, 133
Robert Mulligan: Fear Strikes Out, 13 5
Otto Preminger: Bon;our Tristesse, 137
Nicholas Ray:
Johnny Guitar, 141
Bigger Than Life, 143
Douglas Sirk: Written on the Wind, 148
Frank Tashlin:
The Girl Can 't Help It, 15 1
Hollywood or Bust, 15 2
Edgar Ulmer: The Naked Dawn, 15 5
Charles Vidor: Love Me or Leave Me, 157
Billy Wilder:
The Seven Year Itch, 1 59
Stahg 17, 161
Robert Wise:
So Big, 165
Destination Gobi, 167
I THE GENERATION OF THE TALKIES: The
French
Claude Autant-Lara:
La Traverses de Paris, 17 1
En Cas de Malheur, 173
CONTENTS
Jacques Becker:
Casque d'Or, 177
Touchez Pas au Grisbi, 178
Arsene Lupin, 180
Le Trou, 183
Jacques Becker, a Year After His Death, 186
Robert Bresson:
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, 188
Un Condarnnk 2 Mort SE st Echappk, 19 0
Rene Clement: Monsieur Ripois, 197
Henri-Georges Clouzot: Le Mystere Picasso, 201
Jean Cocteau: Le Testament d1Orph6e, 204
Jules Dassin:
Le Rififi Chez les Hommes, 209
Celui Qui Doit Mourir, 2 10
Sacha Guitry:
Assassins et Voleurs, 2 14
Sacha Guitry the Villain, 216
Albert Lamorisse: Le Ballon Rouge, 220
Jean-Pierre Melville: Les Enfants Terribles, 223
Max Ophuls:
Lola Montes, 22 5
Max Ophuls Is Dead, 229
Jacques Tati: Mon Oncle, 23 5
IV * HURRAH FOR THE JAPANESE CINEMA
Kenji Mizoguchi: The Street of Shame, 241
Kon Ichikawa: The Burmese Harp, 242
Yasushi Nakahira: Juvenile Passion, 244
Keisuke Kinoshita: The Legend of Nayarama, 248
V SOME OUTSIDERS
Ingmar Bergman:
Bergman's Opus, 253
Cries and Whispers, 2 5 7
Buiiuel the Builder, 261
Norman MacLaren: Blinkety Blank, 269
Federico Fellini:
The Nights of Cabiria, 270
842, 271
CONTENTS
Roberto Rossellini Prefers Real Life, 273
Orson Welles:
Citizen Kane, the Fragile Giant, 278
Confidential Report, 28 5
Touch of Evil, 288
A Portrait of Humphrey Bogart, 292
James Dean Is Dead, 296
VI MY FRIENDS IN THE NEW WAVE
Alain Resnais Nuit et Brouillard, 303
Alexandre Astruc- Les Mauvaises Rencontres, 305
Agnes Varda- La Pointe Courte, 308
Roger Vadim. Et Dieu Cr6a la Femme, 3 11
Claude Chabrol Le Beau Serge, 3 13
Louis Malle
Les Amants, 3 14
Le Feu Follet, 3 15
Jean-Luc Godard.
Tous les Carcons S 'appellent Patrick, 3 17
Vivre Sa Vie, 3 18
Jacques Rivette: Paris Nous Appartient, 320
Jacques Rozier Adieu Philippine, 324
Pierre Kast: Vacances Portugaises, 326
Alain Resnais- Muriel, 327
Jean-Pierre Mocky: Les Vierges, 329
Claude Bern
Le Vie11H omme et I 'En/ant, 3 3 1
Le Cinha de Papa, 334
Gerard Blain- Les Anns, 336
Laszlo Szabo- Les Cants Blancs du Diable, 338
Claude Sautet: Vincent, Franqois, Paul et les Autres, 340
Jacques Doillon Les Do~gtsd ans la Tste, 343
Films by Franqois Truffaut, 346
Index, 347
FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT
(19 32-1 984)
Francois Truffaut was born in Paris on February 6, 1932. He left
school at fourteen to work as a welder and at a variety of other jobs.
From his youth, movies were his great interest. Truffaut began a career
as a journalist which was interrupted by military service in 1951. In
1953 he returned to civilian life, and with the help of his friend and
adviser, the film critic Andre Bazin, began to publish his sharply
critical movie reviews in Cahiers du Cinema and Arts.
In 1955 Truffaut made his first short film. His first feature-length
film was The 400 Blows, a partly autobiographical work about a young
boy. It was awarded the 1959 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize for
Direction, the New York Film Critics Award for the year's best foreign
film, and a host of additional prizes. Other highly acclaimed films
followed, at the rate of almost one a year. They dealt with the stronger
emotions, and chiefly love, presented in a variety of modes: farcical,
lyrical, passionate.
In addition to writing screenplays and directing, Truffaut often acted
in films. He continued to write criticism and was the author of
Hitchcock and The Films in My Life, a collection of critical pieces.
Truffaut was a leader of the group of French film makers known as
the New Wave, and was one of the most important directors in the
history of the cinema. He was, as Vincent Canby wrote in The New
York Times, "a quiet revolutionary who worked in conventional modes
to make most unconventional films." He died near Paris on October
21, 1984.
7 believe a work is good to the degree that it expresses the man
who created it.
ORSONW ELLES
These books were alive and they spoke to me.
HENRYM ILLER,
The Books in My Life
3 WHAT DO CRITICS DREAM ABOUT?
WHAT DO CRITICS DREAM
ABOUT?
One day in 1942, I was so anxious to see Marcel Carnk's
Les Visiteurs du Soir, which at last had arrived at my neighborhood
theater, the Pigalle, that I decided to skip school. I liked it a lot.
But that same evening, my aunt, who was studying violin at the
Conservatory, came by to take me to a movie; she had picked Les
Visiteurs du Soir. Since I didn't dare admit that I had already seen
it, I had to go and pretend that I was seeing it for the first time.
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.
A year later, Clouzot's Le Corbeau turned up; it fascinated me
even more. I must have seen it five or six times between the time
of its release (May 1943) and the Liberation, when it was prohibited.
Later, when it was once again allowed to be shown, I used to go to
see it several times a year. Eventually I knew the dialogue by heart.
The talk was very adult compared to the films I had seen, with about
a hundred words whose meaning I only gradually figured out. Since
the plot of Le Corbeau revolved around an epidemic of anonymous
letters denouncing abortion, adultery and various other forms of cor-
ruption, the film seemed to me to be a fairly accurate picture of
what I had seen around me during the war and the postwar period-
collaboration, denunciation, the black market, hustling, cynicism.
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~orb y 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 stom-
achaches, cramps, nervous headaches and guilty feelings, which only
heightened the emotions evoked by the films.
I felt a tremendous need to enter into the films. I sat closer and