Being a Godard lover, I don't know why it took me so long to watch any Truffaut movies. I had seen a total of 0 going into this project- that's shameful. Choosing which of his movies to watch was a little tricky, but there were a few I knew I couldn't miss: The 400 Blows, The Last Metro, and Shoot the Piano Player being chief among them. I also tried to toss in Jules et Jim and Day for Night but inexplicably the latter is not available on Netflix discs. C'mon Netflix, that's an Oscar winner!
Watching Truffaut is interesting for a variety of reasons. For one thing, much like Fellini his films are highly autobiographical. They feature kids with bad home lives or hopeless romantics. Even the bigger films have his style- a trademark mix of the light-hearted and the melancholy. He also helped found the French New Wave movement, although (other than Shoot the Piano Player) his films are not very experimental. Truffaut and Godard had an interesting relationship (he helped write Breathless) which eventually devolved into outright and public denunciations. Strange because their contributions to cinema are so contemporary and entangled...
Anyhoo, The 400 Blows was sad but great. It featured Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine Doinel, a sort of alter-ego character representing Truffaut. The director would return and use that character (and actor) many times throughout his career. In this one he was just a child- a bit of a mischief-maker whose circumstances go from typical boyish antics into a much darker place. Truffaut was not one to shy away from a tragic story, even (especially) when it was his own. The Last Metro was a radical change of pace, a story about a Jewish theater director hiding out in a basement while his wife directs a large production. The love triangle is atypical and the portrayal a bit surprising. I liked it! Shoot the Piano Player is a gangster movie that doesn't take gangsters seriously. As I mentioned, it was the most New Wave-y of them and I appreciated that. Lastly, Jules et Jim was a decades long love story about a friendship twisted into something ugly by the introduction of a pretty woman. I wasn't expecting this one to be my favorite, but something about these small, personal, havoc-ridden love stories really speaks to me. And the music was incredible! "Le cimetiére" by George Delarue rocked my socks (in a slow, sad way); Youtube it if you don't believe me.
Overall, I found Almodóvar a verrry tough act to follow but Truffaut carried it admirably- these are damn good movies that I'll one day revisit. Now to get my hands on Day for Night and Fahrenheit 451...
- The 400 Blows (1959) - 7.5
- Shoot the Piano Player (1960) - 7.5
- Jules et Jim (1962) - 8.5
- The Last Metro (1980) - 7
Next month we're (briefly) back to English-language films with the movies, ahem, I mean joints of Spike Lee!
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