In Totally Truffaut, author Anne Gillain answers two complex riddles: How is experience imprinted into films? What draws audiences to theaters? François Truffaut, like Fellini, Bergman or Scorsese, worked with an autobiographical material and Totally Truffaut follows the coded inscription of major life events in his films from his illegitimate birth to his passionate and doomed relationship with Catherine Deneuve. The book focuses first on the process that embeds experience into fictions, and more specifically into visual forms and patterns. It also tries to define the mode of perception film language triggers in the spectator. When entering a movie theater, we expect perceptual pleasure. Truffaut's creative work is devoted to distilling this drug to audiences, an ambition central to the evolution of his style. These two issues are closely connected and Totally Truffaut follows, film after film, their crisscrossing paths. It also highlights the essential role several great actresses-Jeanne Moreau, Françoise Dorléac, Isabelle Adjani, Jacqueline Bisset, Fanny Ardant or Catherine Deneuve- played in the creation of the films.
Truffaut’s films beautifully demonstrate the idea that a film can express its director as personally as a novel can reveal its author. Moreover, his development of a gently self-conscious visual style made him more than the entertainer he believed he was: there is genuine artistry in his motion pictures. He affected the course of French cinema — indeed world cinema — by blending auteurist art with accessible cinematic storytelling. Unlike other New Wave directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Truffaut preferred idiosyncratic characters (like the semi-autobiographical Antoine Doinel) and universal emotions (especially desire and fear) to political tracts or didactic essays. Instead of the elitism or self-indulgence that characterize much of European cinema, Truffaut’s movies were meant to touch people from different countries, times, and classes. And they keep succeeding in this aim. Truffaut’s cinema remains a model of intimate, reasonably budgeted, sophisticated filmmaking that can still speak delightfully and profoundly to an international audience. Long considered the definitive study of Truffaut’s genius, this revised and updated edition of François Truffaut includes fresh insights and an extensive section on the director’s last five films — Love on the Run, The Green Room, The Last Metro, The Woman Next Door, and Confidentially Yours. While not a biography of the director, Insdorf captures in this study the essence and totality of Truffaut’s work. She discusses his contributions to the French New Wave, his relations with his mentors Hitchcock and Renoir, and the dominant themes of his cinema — women, love, children, language. She explores his life in relation to his films, from The 400 Blows to The Man Who Loved Women. “The most sensitive and intelligent book in the English language about my work.” — François Truffaut “Everyone who loves Truffaut will be delighted to welcome this book to their library.” — Miloš Forman, director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus “Annette Insdorf’s book on Truffaut is the best I know.” — Charles Champlin, The Los Angeles Times “Relevant, illuminating, clever, moving, sane... intelligible.” — Roger Greenspun, film critic “[A]n astute and insightful examination of the director’s work along thematic and psychological lines... Insdorf carefully weaves a complex matrix of loose chords, individual motifs, and personal obsessions that amount to a strikingly coherent vision... Insdorf’s analysis provides the reader with the best examination yet of Truffaut’s work.” — Dan Yakir, Film Comment “Insdorf... succeeds masterfully in fulfilling the purpose of her study of François Truffaut... [an] engaging and sympathetic study.” — Richard Williamson, The French Review “Francois Truffaut has been blessed with intelligent and perceptive critics throughout his career... Annette Insdorf’s new book fits snugly into this tradition of excellence, and even goes the earlier studies one better by treating the films with the comprehensiveness they deserve... The most striking feature of Insdorf’s study is the intense concentration she brings to her discussion of each film. Her insights come thick and fast, in the best New Critical fashion... This is an especially insightful, highly intelligent study.” — Peter Brunette, Film Quarterly “Each chapter in this well-researched and informative book contains extended comparisons of Truffaut’s films. Each aims at specifying the thematic and stylistic continuities that define Truffaut as an auteur... Insdorf’s mastery of the auteurist approach produces a remarkable synthesis of thematic and stylistic continuities.” — Paul Sandro, The French Review “Insdorf’s forte is comparative exposition and synthetic vision. Her early chapters on Truffaut’s sources, Hitchcock and Renoir, and the latter ones on women, children and Truffaut autobiographical films are replete with gems of comparative analysis, e.g. her instructive comparison of Rules of the Game and Day For Night, and the insightful relating of jazz with Truffaut’s own improvisation in early films.” — Francis I. Kane, Literature/Film Quarterly “Insdorf’s insights regarding the famous films are on the mark, and she makes an eloquent case for those not so well thought of.” — Variety
The French New Wave is an essential anthology of writings by and about the critics and filmmakers of this revolutionary cinematic movement, which has had a radical impact on film practice and the way we think and write about film. The volume includes foundational writings such as Francois Truffaut's A Certain Tendency in French Cinema and Andre Bazin's La Politique des auteurs, as well writings by Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Alexandre Astruc. This new edition now represents writings by and about women critics and film-makers, including important articles by the critics Evelyne Sullerot, Michele Firk and Françoise Aude, addressing issues of gender and representation, as well as considering New Wave films in the context of contemporary political events, notably France's colonialist war on the Algerian independence movement. To accompany the case study of Godard's À bout de souffle, the new edition includes a case study of the critical reception of two films by Agnès Varda: La Pointe Courte and Cléo de 5 à 7 . The articles have been specially translated for the volume by Peter Graham, and some are published for the first time in English. These classic writings are accompanied by contextualising introductions by Ginette Vincendeau, updated for this new edition, to form a unique resource on this key cinematic movement and its practitioners.
This study offers a fresh approach to the remarkable German film The Lives of Others (2006), known for its compelling representation of a Stasi surveillance officer and the moral and ethical turmoil that results when he begins spying on a playwright and his actress lover. Annie Ring analyses the film's cinematography, mise-en-scène and editing, tracing connections with Hollywood movies such as Casablanca and Hitchcock's Torn Curtain in the film's portrayal of an individual rebelling against a brutal dehumanising regime. Drawing on archival sources, including primary research from the Stasi files themselves, as well as Enlightenment philosophies of art and Brecht's theories on theatre dating from his GDR years, she explores the film's strong but much-disputed claims to historical authenticity. She examines the way the film tracks the world-changing political shift that took place at the end of the Cold War – away from the collective dreams of socialism and towards the dreams of the private individual, arguing that this is what makes it at once widely appealing and fascinatingly problematic. In doing so, she highlights why The Lives of Others is a crucial film for thinking at the horizon between film and recent world history.
One of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time, Francois Truffaut was an intensely private individual who cultivated the public image of a man completely consumed by his craft. But his personal story—from which he drew extensively to create the characters and plots of his films—is itself an extraordinary human drama. Now, with captivating immediacy, Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana give us the definitive story of this beloved artist. They begin with the unwanted, mischievous child who learned to love movies and books as an escape from sadness and confusion: as a boy, Francois came to identify with screen characters and to worship actresses. Following his early adult years as a journalist, during which he gained fame as France's most iconoclastic film critic, the obsessive prodigy began to make films of his own, and before he was thirty, notched the two masterpieces The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim. As Truffaut's dazzling body of work evolves, in the shadow of the politics of his day, including the student uprisings of 1968, we watch him learning the lessons of his masters Fellini and Hitchcock. And we witness the progress of his often tempestuous personal relationships, including his violent falling-out with Jean-Luc Godard (who owed Truffaut the idea for Breathless) and his rapturous love affairs with the many glamorous actresses he directed, among them Jacqueline Bisset and Jeanne Moreau. With Fanny Ardant, Truffaut had a child only thirteen months before dying of a brain tumor at the age of fifty-two. Here is a life of astonishing emotional range, from the anguish of severe depression to the exaltation of Oscar victory. Based on unprecedented access to Truffaut's papers, including notes toward an unwritten autobiography, de Baecque and Toubiana's richly detailed work is an incomparably authoritative revelation of a singular genius.
A Companion to François Truffaut “An unprecedented critical tribute to the director who, in France, wound up becoming the most controversial figure of the New Wave he helped found.” Raymond Bellour, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique “This exciting collection breaks through the widely held critical view that Truffaut abandoned the iconoclasm of his early work for an academicism he had consistently railed against in his own film criticism. Indeed, if ‘fever’ and ‘fire’ were Truffaut’s most consistent motifs, the essays in this collection live up to his lifelong, burning passion for the cinema. Written by world-famous scholars, the essays exhaustively explore the themes and styles of the films, as well as Truffaut’s relationships to André Bazin, Alfred Hitchcock, and the directors of the New Wave, his ground-breaking and controversial film criticism, and his position in the complex politics of French cultural life from the Popular Front to 1968 and after.” Angelo Restivo, Georgia State University Although the New Wave, one of the most influential aesthetic revolutions in the history of cinema, might not have existed without him, François Truffaut has largely been ignored by film scholars since his death almost thirty years ago. As an innovative theoretician, an influential critic, and a celebrated filmmaker, Truffaut formulated, disseminated, and illustrated the ideals of the New Wave with exceptional energy and distinction. Yet no book in recent years has focused on Truffaut’s value, and his overall contribution to cinema deserves to be redefined not only to reinstate him in his proper place but to let us rethink how cinema developed during his lifetime. In this new Companion, thirty-four original essays by leading film scholars offer new readings of individual films and original perspectives on the filmmaker’s background, influences, and consequence. Hugely influential around the globe, Truffaut is assessed by international contributors who delve into the unique quality of his narratives and establish the depth of his distinctively styled work. An extended interview with French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin tracks Truffaut’s controversial stature within French cinema and vividly identifies how he thinks and works as a director, adding an irreplaceable perspective to this essential volume.
Extremely popular and prolific in the 1930s and 1940s, Cornell Woolrich still has diehard fans who thrive on his densely packed descriptions and his spellbinding premises. A contemporary of Hammett and Chandler, he competed with them for notoriety in the pulps and became the single most adapted writer for films of the noir period. Perhaps the most famous film adaptation of a Woolrich story is Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954). Even today, his work is still onscreen; Michael Cristofer's Original Sin (2001) is based on one of his tales. This book offers a detailed analysis of many of Woolrich's novels and short stories; examines films adapted from these works; and shows how Woolrich's techniques and themes influenced the noir genre. Twenty-two stories and 30 films compose the bulk of the study, though many other additions of films noirs are also considered because of their relevance to Woolrich's plots, themes and characters. The introduction includes a biographical sketch of Woolrich and his relationship to the noir era, and the book is illustrated with stills from Woolrich's noir classics.
François Truffaut (1932-1984) ranks among the greatest film directors and has had a worldwide impact on filmmaking as a screenwriter, producer, film critic, and founding member of the French New Wave. His most celebrated films include The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, Day for Night, and The Last Metro. A Truffaut Notebook is a lively and eclectic introduction to the life and work of this major cinematic figure. In entries as brief as a page, as well as in full-length essays, it examines topics such as Truffaut's mentors, the autobiographical nature of his films, his place in the film tradition, his film criticism, his reputation, his relationships with other directors, and the formal and thematic coherence of his body of work. Sam Solecki also argues for Truffaut's continuing appeal and relevance by examining his influence on filmmakers like Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach, Alexander Payne, Patrice Leconte, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and on writers such as Julian Barnes, Ann Beattie, and Salman Rushdie. Because the book returns regularly to the author's shifting responses to Truffaut's work over the last fifty years, it also offers an autobiographical meditation on his own lifelong fascination with film. Consisting of over eighty short entries and essays, as well as provocative lists, dreams, and quizzes, A Truffaut Notebook is an original and exciting text and a model of passionate engagement with cinema.
“The writings reveal a Truffaut who was as incisive and direct in assessing his own work as he was in assessing the work of other directors.” —Choice Between 1959 and 1984, French film director François Truffaut was interviewed over three hundred times. Each interview offers critical insight into the genesis of Truffaut’s films as he shares the sources of his inspiration, the choice of his themes, and the development of his screenplays. In addition, Truffaut discusses his relationships with collaborators, actors, and the circumstances surrounding the shooting of each film. These texts, originally assembled by Anne Gillain and published in French in 1988, are presented here in a montage arranged chronologically by film. This compilation includes an impressive array of reflections on cinema as an art form. Truffaut defines the aims and practices of the French New Wave, comparing their efforts to the films made by their predecessors and including comments that encompass the entire history of cinema. Truffaut on Cinema provides commentary on contemporary events, a wealth of biographical information, and Truffaut’s own artistic itinerary.
First in a series designed to situate and explain the films of French directors. A concise, accessible and original reading of Truffaut's films. A timely evaluation of the films of a popular director whose work features on most A-level French syllabuses and on the majority of University French Studies programmes both in the UK and the USA .
