François Truffaut

Biography: life and films

Love is a powerful thing, perhaps the most powerful force in nature. This is certainly the impression we get by watching the films of François Truffaut, the most commercially successful and best known of the French New Wave directors, whose films reflect his own personal quest for love after a childhood that was mostly loveless. It was Truffaut's manic love of cinema, inculcated at an early age, that led him to make a name for himself as a firebrand critic, and it was the same all consuming passion that made him one of the world's best loved film directors. His cinema is unequivocally the cinema of love - selfish love, life-affirming love, destructive love, morbid love and the absence of love. "Is the cinema more important than life?" he once famously asked. Perhaps they are one in the same thing.

François Truffaut was a self-taught genius whose achievements belie his humble origins. He was born in Paris on the 6th February 1932 to an unmarried young woman, Jeanine de Monferrand, who was a secretary on the newspaper L'Illustration. He never met his biological father, although he later found out, through a private detective agency, that he was a Jewish dentist named Roland Lévy. The stigma of childbirth outside marriage in the 1930s was such that Jeanine felt she had to keep her pregnancy a secret. Once François was born, he was placed in the care of a nurse for the first year of his life, before being handed over to his maternal grandmother. After the latter's death, the 8-year boy returned to live with his mother, who had since married Roland Truffaut, an architect's assistant.

The Man Who Loved Cinema

François was resented by both his mother and his stepfather. Books and films provided a welcome escape from his otherwise dull and loveless existence. By 1942, he was already addicted to cinema. Leaving school in 1946, he earned his keep by doing odd jobs and, for a time, working as a welder in a factory. He attended cinema clubs and met the critic André Bazin through the film initiation society he was involved with. The young François's burgeoning passion for cinema led him to found his own film club Cinémane in 1948 with his childhood friend Robert Lachenay. The club rapidly got into debt and Truffaut's adopted father had no qualms about handing him over to the police. He spent the next five months in a juvenile detention centre, an episode he poignantly recalls in the first feature he made, Les 400 coups. On his release, François was encouraged by André Bazin to start writing articles about cinema for various publications.

After his first disappointment in love, Truffaut enlisted in the army with the intention of getting involved in the conflict in Indochina. Instead, he was posted to Germany, where he ended up in a military prison after he extended his leave in Paris without permission. Again, it was Bazin who came to his aid when he was demobbed, assuming the role of a mentor and 'père spirituel'. Under Bazin's tutelage, Truffaut resumed his writing career and began publishing articles in the Cahiers du cinéma and Revue Arts. This is how he came into contact with some other young and controversial critics - Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer - who, like him, were destined to become the most prominent French filmmakers of their generation.

In 1954 Truffaut published his most notorious article in the Cahiers du cinéma. Entitled "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" it lambasted the so-called quality tradition of French cinema and came down in support of what is now known as the auteur principle, in which the director is the overriding creative force on a film and not just someone who arranges the furniture in front of the camera. He was virulent in his criticism of directors Claude Autant-Lara and Jean Delannoy, whom he regarded as emblematic of a style of cinema that he considered rigid and stale, and also attacked screenwriters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost for their formulaic adaptation of classic works of literature, in which a complex written narrative is clinically reduced to a few dozen dramatic scenes.

Critic Turns Filmmaker

Truffaut's first experience of filmmaking came in 1954 when he made the short film Une visite. He regarded this first effort as a failure and it was never exploited commercially. Two years later, he was engaged as an assistant to the great Italian cineaste Roberto Rossellini, who was to be another important influence on his life. It was around this time that the future director first met the writer Henri-Pierre Roché and became interested in adapting his novel Jules et Jim, for the cinema. Roché's humanity and impressionistic style of writing had such an effect on Truffaut that they would come to define his own style of cinematic expression.

In 1957, Truffaut married Madeleine Morgenstern, whose father owned the film distribution company Cocinor. The couple would have two daughters, Laura and Éva, but their marriage lasted only seven years. With the financial support of his father-in-law, the aspiring filmmaker was able to found his own film production company, Les Films du Carrosse, in July 1957, the name taken from Jean Renoir's film Le Carrosse d'or. The first film he made for his fledgling company was a humorous short, Les Mistons (1957), which featured Gérard Blain and Bernadette Lafont, two actors who would soon become closely associated with the French New Wave.

Then came his feature debut, Les 400 coups (1959), a film in which Truffaut drew heavily on his painful early adolescence, in particular his fraught relationship with his mother and stepfather. In the film, the man behind the camera is represented on screen by his alter ego Antoine Doinel, portrayed with an arresting gauche charm and vitality by 14-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud. The director saw something of his earlier self in the temperamental Léaud and became an adopted father to him, giving him moral and financial support whilst calling on his services as an actor in several subsequent films, including the following four instalments of the Antoine Doinel saga. Attracting an audience in France of 3.6 million, Les 400 coups was a critical and commercial success and won the Best Director Prize at Cannes in 1959. The French New Wave had arrived and Truffaut's idea of cinema appeared to have been vindicated.

For his sophomore film, Truffaut was guided by his love of American pulp fiction. Adapted from a crime novel by David Goodis, Tirez sur le pianiste (1960) is among the director's most evocative and stylish films, an existential poem draped in the stark iconography of American film noir. The censors took exception to the film's violence and slapped an 18 certificate on it, which might partly explain why it ended up struggling to find an audience. Truffaut followed this first commercial failure with another by producing and co-directing Tire-au-flanc, based on a popular stage play of 1904 which Jean Renoir had himself adapted back in 1928.

A Pillar of the French New Wave

After these two catastrophic setbacks, Truffaut badly needed another success if he was to continue as an independent filmmaker and so he immediately set about realising his much delayed plans to adapt Henri-Pierre Roché's Jules et Jim. This lyrical ode to love and friendship was to be his masterpiece and its success at the French box office restored not just his bank balance but also his confidence. One of the most iconic films of the French New Wave, Jules et Jim brought international renown not only to its director, but also to his leading lady, Jeanne Moreau.

As well as crime fiction, Truffaut was also an avid reader of American science-fiction and he had for some been minded to adapt Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. He intended bringing this to fruition after completing Antoine Doinel's second outing in the Antoine et Colette segment of the anthology film L'Amour à vingt ans (1962), but the opportunity to interview one of his personal idols, the British director Alfred Hitchcock, intervened. Truffaut had been one of the first critics to defend Hitchcock's reputation as a serious auteur, and by interviewing him (in Los Angeles, over a period of six days) he gained some profound insights into The Master's technique and philosophy of filmmaking. Writing up the interviews for publication would be a labour of love for Truffaut over the next two years, and the book he created, Hitchcock: A Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock, soon became an essential text for any film student or devotee of cinema.

Not yet up to the challenge of making Fahrenheit 451, the director took time out to make a more modest film which, he hoped, would help to replenish the dwindling coffers of his film production company. Somewhat darker in tone than the director's previous films, La Peau douce (1964) brings a Hitchcockian feel to a portrayal of a crumbling marriage and hesitant adulterous relationship. The film was inspired by its director's own failing marriage and a brief affair with Marie-France Pisier. Despite some strong performances from its lead actors, Jean Desailly and Françoise Dorléac (sister to the then virtually unknown Catherine Deneuve), this was another flop. Truffaut and Madeleine Morgenstern's divorce came not long afterwards.

Then, out of the blue, the director received an invitation from the American producer Lewis Allen to helm Bonnie and Clyde. At first, he was excited by the prospect of making a film in America, but once the reality of what this entailed hit home he got cold feet and withdrew from the project, allowing Arthur Penn to take his place and direct what was destined to be a classic of American cinema. Fahrenheit 451 seemed to be a far safer bet, even though it was to be filmed at Pinewood Studios in England and was the director's first attempt at an English language feature. Terence Stamp was lined up to play the lead character, maverick 'fireman' Montag, but his commitments on William Wyler's The Collector meant that he had to decline the role. Oskar Werner, now famous for his part in Jules et Jim, was cast as his replacement, a decision that Truffaut would soon come to regret. Werner and the director fell out over how Montag was to be played and this, coupled with the casting of Julie Christie in a double role, resulted in acrimony that almost derailed the production. Bradbury was effusive in his praise for the film but, on its release in 1966, it received short shrift from the critics and was not a commercial success. Of all the director's films, Fahrenheit 451 is the one that has been mostly wide seen and, whilst flawed in many respects, it has some incredibly powerful scenes.

Released in France just a few weeks before the tumultuous events of May 1968 La Mariée était en noir proved to be an unexpected critical and commercal success for a director who was beginning to think he had lost his touch. With Jeanne Moreau at her deadliest in a Hitchcockian thriller with black comic undertones, the film is one of Truffaut's most entertaining, although it might fit more easily into the oeuvre of his contemporary Claude Chabrol than his own. It was with renewed confidence that the director set about Baisers volés, the third of his Antoine Doinel films. Despite the fact that the director's mind was on other matters whilst making the film (helping to reinstate Henri Langlois as the head of the Cinématèque francaise for one) the film, a quirky romantic comedy, proved to be a huge success, both in France and abroad, better known to the English speaking world as Stolen Kisses. In the course of making this film, Truffaut became amorously involved with Claude Jade, his 16-year-old lead actress. The two intended to marry but the bridegroom-to-be failed to show up at the wedding ceremony, although they remained on the best of terms afterwards, with Jade agreeing to appear in the next two Doinel films.

Its exteriors filmed on the paradisiacal island of Reunion, La Sirène du Mississipi is one of the most sumptuous looking of the director's films, and its principal cast is just as appealing. With two such bankable stars as Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo on board the film could hardly fail to be a hit, but fail it did, thanks to some scathing reviews from critics who saw little of merit in it. The director was too besotted with Deneuve, the most beautiful woman in the world, to be deeply affected by yet another box office let down and their high profile love affair lasted two years. When the relationship ended in 1971 Truffaut was devastated.

The Post-Nouvelle Vague Years

Whilst coming to terms with his biggest commercial failure so far, Truffaut was busy preparing his next film, L'Enfant sauvage, inspired by the true story of Dr Jean Itard's attempts to civilise a boy found living like a wild animal in the countryside of Aveyron. For the first time, the director took the lead role and the result is one of his most beguiling films, one that again reflects on the brutality of childhood and the necessity for parental love. Despite being filmed on a modest budget in black and white, it was well received by both the critics and the public. This success was followed by another, Domicile conjugale (1970), the penultimate screen outing for Antoine Doinel.

In the grim aftermath of the break-up of his relationship with Catherine Deneuve, Truffaut returned to the source that had given him the subject matter for his greatest film so far, Henri-Pierre Roché. After Jules et Jim, Roché wrote only one more novel, Les Deux anglaises et le continent, and, through his close friendship with the author before he died, Truffaut felt a personal commitment to adapt this for cinema. The bravest decision he took was to cast Jean-Pierre Léaud, the star of his Doinel films, in the lead role, alongside two virtually unknown English actresses, Kika Markham and Stacey Tendeter. The director's certainty that this was to be his masterpiece was shot down when the film bombed at the box office amid a barrage of negative reviews.

The sombre tone of Les Deux anglaises et le continent had its counterpoint with the director's next film, an exuberant black comedy that gave André Dussollier his first important role in a film and showed Nouvelle Vague diva Bernadette Lafont at her most wildly entertaining as a girl who just can't help being bad. Alas, the critics failed to get the joke and Une belle fille comme moi was another box office disaster.

With La Nuit américaine, Truffaut made his most ardent declaration of love for cinema, a humorous but mostly authentic exposé of the perilous process by which films are made. Again, the director cast himself in the lead role, a film director coping as best he can with the endless setbacks that come his way as he attempts to stick to his shooting schedule. It's a likeable ensemble piece, with some fine support from Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Baye and an annoying cat that refuses to take its breakfast on cue. Under the title Day for Night, the film was a big hit in America and won the 1974 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The sweetness of this success was soured by what ensued. Immediately after watching the film, Jean-Luc Godard wrote a letter to Truffaut condemning him for effectively selling out to commercial cinema. A friendship that had started in adolescence and had brought about the most dramatic upheaval in French cinema ended suddenly and irrevocably with two irreconcilable views of what cinema was meant to be about.

The tragic story of Victor Hugo's daughter was the subject of the director's next film, a lavishly produced period piece set in Nova Scotia in the 1860s. 17-year old Isabelle Adjani was an easy shoe-in for the lead role in L'Histoire d'Adèle H., and her portrayal of a young woman driven to distraction by a compulsive amour fou gives the film an almost visceral emotional power. The film's production was a challenge, in part because of the need to shoot two versions in parallel (one in English, one in French), but also because of Truffaut's romantic involvement with his young star. The film was only a moderate success and fared better abroad than it did in France.

By contrast, the director's next film, L'Argent de poche (1976), was a great success, with the director happily revisiting his favourite theme of childhood. L'Homme qui aimait les femmes (1977), a dark comedy that doubtless sprang from the director's obsession with the fair sex, was also well-received by cinemagoers. In this film, we become aware of the dark mood that pervades his films from this point on, a sense perhaps of the director waking up to his own mortality. This impression is felt far more strongly in the film that came next, La Chambre verte (1978). Inspired by a Henry James novel, this film sees Truffaut playing a strange recluse who is obsessively attached to the memories of friends that have passed on. The public did not warm to the film's sepulchral tone and it was another flop. Then came the director's second sci-fi fling, this time playing the scientist Lacombe in Steven Spielberg's genre-defining blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

A Final Flourish and Tragic Departure

L'Amour en fuite (1979) was a desperate attempt by Truffaut to make up for his earlier box office failures, and even though the gamble paid off he regretted making yet another Antoine Doinel film. Just as La Nuit américaine had been conceived as a tribute to cinema, Le Dernier métro (1980) was intended to pay homage to the theatre. Set in Paris at the time of the Nazi occupation, the film is a bleak but compelling study in personal integrity, in which loyalties to art, relationships and political beliefs are threatened by the most destructive force of all, carnal desire. With Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu heading an impressive cast the film was guaranteed to be a hit (in fact it was to be the director's last major success) and it almost swept the board at the Césars in 1980, winning awards in ten categories.

The grandeur of Le Dernier métro makes a stark contrast with Truffaut's next film, La Femme d'à côté (1981). A far more subdued drama, the film encapsulates its author's pessimistic view of romantic love in the destructive relationship between a young married wife and the neighbour who is lured to her like a moth to a flame. Just like the character that Gérard Depardieu plays in the film, the director was unable to resist the charms of his lead actress Fanny Ardant and she would become his partner until the end of his life, bearing him his third child, Joséphine, in 1983. Ardant took the female lead in Truffaut's next and final film, Vivement dimanche! (1982), a cheeky B-movie parody which owes as much to Hitchcock as it does to classic American film noir.

After the success of Vivement dimanche!, the director had plans for three further films - an adaptation of Jean de la Varende's historical romance Nez de cuir; an adolescent drama entitled La Petite voleuse (which ended up being made by his production manager Claude Miller); and L'Agence magique, a film set in the world of the music hall. During the night of 12th August 1983, after spending the day developing ideas for his next film, Truffaut vomited blood and subsequently experienced severe headaches. A few days later he was diagnosed with a brain tumour which required an immediate surgical intervention. Although the operation was successful, the tumour returned the following year and ultimately claimed his life, on 21st October 1984, after he had been admitted to the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine. He was 52. At his request, Truffaut was cremated at Père-Lachaise crematorium and his ashes presently reside at Montmartre cemetery in Paris.

Despite his premature death and the fact that he made only 21 full-length films, François Truffaut has had an enormous impact on cinema, not only entertaining and enlightening successive generations around the world with his films, but also influencing the screenwriters and directors that came after him. Like his hero Hitchcock, he showed that it was possible to be both a dedicated auteur and a commercially successful filmmaker - the one does not automatically preclude the other. Truffaut's guiding principle was that for a film to be successful it must say something about the world and also something about cinema. In his films, this union of life and art is achieved with exquisite artistry and we are impressed as much with the director's understanding of the human condition as with the beauty of his cinema.

For further information, the reader is strongly encouraged to check out Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana's beautifully written and thoroughly researched biography François Truffaut, published by Gallimard.

Filmography

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External Links

• For an informative biography visit: New Wave Film.