Frame By Frame: Francois Truffaut

University Communications Author

09/12/2016 Added

347 Plays

Description

UNL Film Studies professor Wheeler Winston Dixon examines the career of French filmmaker Francois Truffaut.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:00.301](clicking)
[00:00:03.497](upbeat music)
[00:00:15.512]Hi, I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon
[00:00:17.386]and this is Frame by Frame.
[00:00:19.049]And I did a Frame by Frame a couple of years ago
[00:00:21.749]on Jean Luc Godard so it's only appropriate
[00:00:23.912]that I do one on the other lion
[00:00:25.586]of the French new wave, Francois Truffaut.
[00:00:28.126]Francous Truffaut was the much more romantic film maker.
[00:00:31.586]He was born in 1932, he died, unfortunately in 1984
[00:00:36.649]of a brain tumor at the age of 52.
[00:00:39.672]But in his short career he managed
[00:00:41.872]to create a series of beautiful films,
[00:00:44.302]the first of which was The 400 Blows in 1959
[00:00:48.220]with a very young Jean Pierre Leaud.
[00:00:50.597]It's an autobiographical story about Truffaut's youth
[00:00:54.249]where he was nearly a juvenile delinquent
[00:00:56.947]and was only rescued from the streets of Paris
[00:00:59.112]by Andre Bazin who brought him into Cahier De Cinema
[00:01:02.439]which was the great French film magazine.
[00:01:04.536]And he made this film in 1959 for practically
[00:01:07.349]no money at all.
[00:01:08.489]It was a huge hit.
[00:01:10.036]And from then he went on to make Shoot the Piano Player
[00:01:13.926]which is sort of a detective romantic comedy,
[00:01:16.949]Jules and Jim which is one of the most beautiful
[00:01:19.299]romance films of all time.
[00:01:21.186]Is it true that a long time ago
[00:01:25.662]fireman used to put out fires and not burn books?
[00:01:30.486]Fahrenheit 451 which remains
[00:01:32.661]his only English film and which in a way accurately
[00:01:36.696]predicts the future where there are no books.
[00:01:39.212]And where you have an entire society
[00:01:41.462]which is completely composed of images.
[00:01:43.849]And it's a very underrated film and quite effective.
[00:01:47.212]Day for Night which is for me the greatest movie
[00:01:50.085]about making movies, that was made in 1973.
[00:01:53.339]And towards the end of his career The Green Room.
[00:01:56.902]Most people know him because he plays the scientist
[00:01:59.762]in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
[00:02:02.089]He loved working on that film because he was paid
[00:02:04.562]an enormous amount of money, they would do one shot
[00:02:07.189]per day, and he could spend the rest of the time
[00:02:09.662]in his trailer writing the scripts
[00:02:11.126]for his next three movies.
[00:02:12.689]So, Francois Truffaut was an effective force in that film
[00:02:16.926]but a brilliant film maker in his own right.
[00:02:18.949]His death in 1984 was far too early
[00:02:21.002]because he was an absolute genius.
[00:02:22.776]So, the next time that you have the end
[00:02:25.976]to look at a classic romantic example
[00:02:28.812]of the French avant garde I suggest
[00:02:31.248]The 400 Blows, The Soft Skin, Jules and Jim,
[00:02:35.762]Fahrenheit 451, and Day for Night,
[00:02:38.760]which is one of the most beautiful films
[00:02:40.912]about the passion and power of movie making.
[00:02:44.149]I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon and this is Frame By Frame.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Frame By Frame: Francois Truffaut

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments