L'Enfant sauvage (1970)
Directed by François Truffaut

Film Review

It was in the spring of 1964 that François Truffaut came across an article in the French newspaper Le Monde that provided him with the subject for his eleventh and, some may argue, most personal film, L'Enfant sauvage. The article was a review of a recently published book by the eminent sociology professor Lucien Malson, Les Enfants sauvages, mythe et réalité, which presented 52 documented cases of feral children from 1344 to 1968.  The story that most interested Truffaut was that of Victor of Aveyron, who was discovered living wild in 1798 and subjected to a laborious process of civilisation by Dr Jean Itard, a specialist in deaf and dumb children.

Having read the article, Truffaut immediately rushed out and bought several copies of Malson's book, intending to make the wild child Victor the subject of his next film, a welcome distraction from his recent box office failure, La Peau douce (1964).  To assist on the screenplay, he hired Jean Gruault, with whom he had worked successfully on Jules et Jim (1962).  In spite of Truffaut's commitment to the film its gestation was slow and painful.  At one point, the script became so long that the film could have ended up as a three hour long epic.  The script went through many revisions before the film finally went into production, in the summer of 1969.

Another difficulty was finding financial backing for what promised to be a low-key auteur film, of limited interest to the mainstream.  Having opted for a near-documentary realist style similar to that favoured by Robert Bresson, Truffaut was insistent that the film would be made in black and white and would feature no big name actors.  In the end, he managed to persuade the American distributor United Artists to put up the bulk of the finance, as part of a two picture deal that included La Sirène du Mississippi (1969).  The latter film, a sumptuous location piece starring Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo, was thought to be a sure-fire success, so its box office receipts would more than make up for the anticipated losses of L'Enfant sauvage.  As it turned out, the glitzy Deneuve-Belmondo thriller proved to be a dismal flop and it was L'Enfant sauvage that brought home the bacon, finding success both in France (where it attracted an audience of 1.5 million) and internationally.

Although Truffaut was not consciously aware of it whilst preparing the film, L'Enfant sauvage had a significant auto-biographical dimension.  Not only does the film revisit a subject very close to the director's heart - children excluded from society and denied the adult attention they need to develop properly, so poignantly explored in his debut feature Les 400 coups (1959) - it also touches on his close personal relationship with André Bazin, the influential film critic who became a spiritual father and who helped to civilise him.  A neglected child himself, Truffaut became an outspoken proponent of the rights of the child, the one social and political cause to which he lent his voice and was wholeheartedly committed throughout his adult life.

By making L'Enfant sauvage, Truffaut not only acknowledged his debt to André Bazin, he also sought to pay homage to silent cinema and those directors who had had the strongest influence on him.  It is not too difficult to spot the gracious nods to such luminaries as Jean Vigo and Jean Renoir, and the casting of Jean Dasté in a prominent role reminds us of the esteem in which he held these great auteurs of French cinema.  Truffaut's use of the iris to close scenes is the most visible reference to the silent era, but the sparsity of dialogue and reliance on visual cues are just as eloquent in their praise of the early cinema.  In his attempt to recapture the grandeur of the silent film, Truffaut is well-served by his cinematographer Néstor Almendros.  So successful was their collaboration that Almendros became the director's cinematographer of choice, working on eight of his subsequent films, including his elegant tribute to film noir Vivement dimanche! (1983), the last film Truffaut made before his untimely death in October 1984.

It was with some reluctance that Truffaut decided to play the part of the central adult character, the humane but driven scientist Dr Itard.  This was the first time that the director had taken a credited film role, although he had made cameo appearances in some of his previous films.  The task proved to be more challenging for Truffaut than he had imagined, but he found the experience an enlightening one, the first time he was able to closely identify with an adult character in his films.  He found that Itard's relationship with his wild child subject mirrored that of his own real-life experiences with Jean-Pierre Léaud, the star of his first film who, under his tutelage, became a popular and successful actor.  For this reason, Truffaut made the decision to dedicate the film to Léaud, his own wild child.  Despite having no prior acting experience, Truffaut turns in a remarkably astute and engaging performance.  He would take the lead in two of his subsequent films, La Nuit américaine (1973) and La Chambre verte (1978), and Steven Spielberg gave him a substantial role in his sci-fi blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

Finding an actor to play the titular wild child was even more problematic.  Around two and half thousand schoolboys were interviewed for the part before Truffaut's assistant came across Jean-Pierre Cargol, a 12-year-old gypsy boy whose uncle (it was later discovered) was the flamenco guitarist Manitas de Plata.  With his dark skin, penetrating eyes and lively, almost feral persona, Cargol was an ideal casting choice, almost as wild in real life as the character he portrayed on screen.  Truffaut had high hopes for the young actor and even took pains to teach him the rudiments of film directing, but Cargol's association with cinema extended no further than one other film - Geoffrey Reeve's thriller Caravan to Vaccares (1974) - in which he had a small role.

As in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, L'Enfant sauvage depicts the painstaking process by which an educated man attempts to civilise a noble savage, the assumption being that it is better to be civilised and live within an ordered society than to eke out a hard, cultureless existence as a wild outsider.  Having been rescued from savagery by his own Professor Higgins (André Bazin) Truffaut clearly holds the view that man is improved by civilisation, this being the only route by which he may achieve his full potential.  Whilst it covers similar ground, the general tone of the film is somewhat more optimistic than that of Les 400 coups, where the main protagonist (Truffaut's alter ego played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) appears to be permanently excluded from society as a result of parental neglect and societal indifference.

In L'Enfant sauvage, Truffaut pointedly asserts his own view on society's obligations to children and his belief that no child can develop into a well-rounded individual without the committed attention, love and support of responsible adults.  Yet, underlying this positive message, there is also a subtle note of regret.  As Victor becomes increasingly drawn into the civilised world, as he becomes tamed and educated, we cannot help but feel a sense of loss at the severing of his ties to nature.  Whilst it is undoubtedly the case that human beings are enriched by culture and the society of others, it is also true that this civilisation comes at a cost, a permanent exile from the lush Eden that all other creatures seem to inhabit with enviable insouciance.  Dr Itard may rejoice in his success at the end of the film, but it is hard to miss the whiff of tragedy in the final shot of an enlightened Victor as he contemplates his future.

Film Synopsis

Summer, 1798.  In the forests of a rural area of southern France, a party of hunters discover and capture a 12 year old boy who appears to have spent his life living like a wild animal.  He is taken to a school for deaf and dumb children in Paris, where is maltreated and becomes an object of scientific curiosity.  An eminent doctor, Jean Itard, takes an interest in the strange child and resolves to civilise him at his home in the country, just outside Paris.  At first the feral child appears unresponsive to his benefactor's kindness, but Itard perseveres and the boy slowly succumbs to his civilising influence...