Frame By Frame: Francois Truffaut

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09/12/2016 Added

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

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[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.

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