A Companion to François Truffaut Wiley Blackwell Companions to Film Directors Series

?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.

Acknowledgments viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Preface xv

Filmography xxiii

Part I La Planète Truffaut 1

1. Interview with Arnaud Desplechin, Part I: Truffaut and His Position 3
Anne Gillain and Dudley Andrew

2. Truffaut and His “Doubles” 23
Martin Lefebvre

3. Aesthetic Affinities: François Truffaut, Patrick Modiano, Douglas Sirk 71
Anne Gillain

4. Interview with Arnaud Desplechin, Part II: Truffaut and His Methods 105
Anne Gillain and Dudley Andrew

Part II Style and Sensibility 125

5. Flashes of Happiness 127
Alain Bergala

6. Truffaut and the Photographic: Cinema, Fetishism, Death 137
Junji Hori

7. The Impasse of Intimacy: Romance and Tragedy in Truffaut’s Cinema 153
John Orr

8. A Fine Madness: Digressions on Pathologies in Truffaut’s Films 173
Francis Vanoye

9. The Ecstatic Pan 184
Phil Powrie

10. The Untimely Moment and the Correct Distance 205
Adrian Martin

Part III The Making of a Filmmaker 219

11. Every Teacher Needs a Truant: Bazin and L’Enfant sauvage 221
Dudley Andrew

12. Certain Tendencies of Truffaut’s Film Criticism 242
Richard Neupert

13. Truffaut–Hitchcock 265
Jonathan Everett Haynes

14. The Paradox of “Familiarity”: Truffaut, Heir of Renoir 283
Ludovic Cortade

15. Cain and Abel: Godard and Truffaut 300
Michel Marie

16. Friction, Failure, and Fire: Truffaut as Adaptive Auteur 317
Timothy Corrigan

Part IV Truffaut and His Time 333

17. Growing Up with the French New Wave 335
James Tweedie

18. Bad Objects: Truffaut’s Radicalism 356
Sam Di Iorio

19. Between Renoir and Hitchcock: The Paradox of Truffaut’s Women 375
Ginette Vincendeau

20. Truffaut in the Mirror of Japan 388
Kan Nozaki

Part V Films 401

21. Directing Children: The Double Meaning of Self-Consciousness 403
Angela Dalle Vacche

22. Jules et Jim … et Walter Benjamin 420
Dudley Andrew

23. Digging Up the Past: Jules et Jim 434
Elizabeth Ezra

24. The Elevator and the Telephone: On Urgency in La Peau douce 448
Michel Chion

25. La Peau douce: A Psychogeography of Silky Cinephilia 454
Tom Conley

26. La Peau douce: François Truffaut’s Passionate Object 469
Hilary Radner

27. An Unsettling Passage: From Les Deux Anglaises et le continent to La Chambre verte 489
Carlos Losilla

28. The Structural Role of Intervals in L’Argent de poche 507
Alain Bergala

29. To Die or to Love: Modern Don Juans in Truffaut and Oliveira 517
Luiza Jatobá

30. Film as Literature: or the Truffaldian Malaise (L’Homme qui aimait les femmes) 530
Lúcia Nagib

31. The Elegist: François Truffaut inside La Chambre verte 546
Philip Watts

32. La Chambre verte and the Beating Heart of Truffaut’s Oeuvre 561
Françoise Zamour

33. Le Dernier Métro: An Underground Golden Coach 571
Jean-Michel Frodon

34. Disillusionment and Magic in La Nuit américaine and Le Dernier Métro 584
Marc Vernet

Index 594

Dudley Andrew is the R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University, USA. He is the author or editor of nine books, including The Major Film Theories, Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture (2005), What Cinema Is! (2010), and Opening Bazin (2011), which won the SCMS Best Anthology Award for 2011.

Anne Gillain is professor emeritus at Wellesley College, USA. She is known for her work on French cinema, particularly François Truffaut, in books that include Le Cinéma selon François Truffaut (1988), Les 400 Coups (1991), and François Truffaut: The Lost Secret (2013).