Just before I started my self-imposed cinematic awakening, I was hanging around some of my more artfully inclined friends. A question was posed that basically boiled down to which director was everyone’s favorite. After telling everyone my personal favorite, I was received with scoffs. Not because the director was bad but because he had done so little in the scope of cinematic history when others had done so much. I defended my pick, which was Jean-Pierre Jeunet, because his movies just make me feel a certain way and I view that as one of the most important aspects of art.
Then I geared up for my great directorial undertaking (or if we’re being fair, the appraisal of other people’s directorial undertakings). I quickly realized that the foundations of my favorite and any previous director hierarchies I had created were going to be obliterated by the shear amount of great auteurs I was subjecting myself to. Immediately this proved to be true as I began to watch Francois Truffaut’s filmography in chronological order. Before picking the three directors I was going to start with, I was wavering between Truffaut and his French new wave counterpart, Jean Luc Godard. My infinitely more wise friend, Justin, told me that I should go with the former because I would simply like him more. I cannot speak to whether or not that is true yet but I certainly loved Truffaut.
Truffaut was just so enjoyable. Even when some of his movies dragged, they weren’t overbearing or too preachy. Truffaut had some films in his filmography that I was really worried I would find boring, like Mississippi Mermaid, but they ended up being exciting and engaging. Mermaid, which was about the hoodwinking of a newly betrothed man by his pen-pal wife, ended up being one of my top-5 favorite Truffaut films, period. The film was Hitchcockian, sexy and full of twists that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the entirety of the film. Catherine Deneuve cemented her place in my power rankings of beautiful, talented actresses by playing the twisted Julie Roussell perfectly.
Not only could Truffaut create cinema that was truly riveting, at times he crafted genuine, comedic movies. Shoot The Piano Player is an example of how he could weave thrills with touches of wit without coming off cheap or hokey. This is true of the entire Antoine Doinel series of films as well. Day for Night won an academy award for Best Foreign Language Film and it perfectly welded the dramatic elements that follow shooting a movie with the fun and excitement that the crew engage in behind the scenes. Obviously a movie about making movies is probably going to be every film majors favorites for any director. This one really stands the test of time, like the majority of Truffaut’s work.
The movie I would have to say is my favorite of Truffaut’s, would be The Last Metro which couples Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu in a pair of truly engaging roles. The supporting cast, much like Day for Night, deserves a lot of credit for making this movie enjoyable from every character’s point of view and individual storylines. This was another one of those movies that I was a little hesitant to watch at first. It is one of Truffaut’s most critically accepted but the subject matter is so harsh that I was worried I would wind up enthralled but depressed by the time the film concluded. This wasn’t the case because Truffaut never let his movies become too heady or anything less than enjoyable. That’s a pretty impressive feat considering just how bleak some of the endings of his movies tend to be. The man was not afraid to kill off some characters. For the most part that never felt forced and usually felt like the appropriate ending for these character’s narratives.
Overall, I really enjoyed Truffaut and I think he could become one of my all-time favorites when I spend more time re-watching some of my personal and critical favorites from his filmography. I would suggest checking out Day for Night, The Last Metro, The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, or Mississippi Mermaid as soon as possible.
A Cinematic Odyssey 