THE FILMS IN MY LIFE

by Francois Truffaut ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1978

Before The Four Hundred Blows thrust him into New Wave filmmaking, Francois Truffaut was the enfant terrible of French film criticism: disciple to AndrÉ Bazin, staunch defender of the American ""auteur"" (a term he coined) from Hitchcock to Welles, and--as he recalls--reputed ""demolisher of French cinema."" Interwoven with more equable recent tributes, and preceded by an introduction weighing the relative merits of art and criticism, the bulk of Truffaut's reviews, originally printed in the Fifties, recall the heyday of ""Cahiers du CinÉma"" with prose that is vivid, ebullient, breezy, frequently hyperbolic, and--as he is wont to say at the close of a notice--""never boring."" Truffaut once insisted that he's never loved a person the way he loved Citizen Kane, and it is with this singular intensity that he confronts movies from L'Atalante to The Birds, and directors from Jean Renoir to John Ford, the latter an acquired passion. Although shot through with allusions (often strained) to literature and philosophy as well as cinema, Truffaut's articles are far from academic and frequently antic or piquant. In the midst of a tirade against Mervyn Leroy's The Bad Seed, for instance, Truffaut pauses to recommend the food at the director's luncheon; and his response to The Big Secret is distress at the quality of fiber selected to shield Jane Russell's bosom. ""Was I a good critic?"" inquires Truffaut. An interesting one always, and on the subject of Lubitsch, Welles, Chaplin, Hitchcock, or Ophuls--excellent. Replete with autobiographical cullings, this sampling of Truffaut's criticism--like his interviews with Hitchcock--is ever alert to the craft as well as the art of the director and would be intriguing even if he had not thus evolved himself.

Pub Date: June 1, 1978

ISBN: 0306805995

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1978

Categories: NONFICTION