Special Season: April 16 - April 30
François Truffaut: Child of the Cinema
A key agent of the French New Wave, François Truffaut (1932-1984) remains one of the most important & fondly remembered film-makers in cinema history, his deeply humanist vision enduring to this day.
Born out of wedlock in 1932, Truffaut's biography has become the stuff of cinephilic legend. A regular truant from school, he discovered cinema at the age of 8 & instantly fell in love with in, becoming a regular at Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque Français in his adolescence. After joining & deserting the French army in the early 1950's, Truffaut fell in with André Bazin and, along with future film-makers like Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer & Claude Chabrol, began writing for the newly established film journal, Les Cahiers du cinéma.
While using criticism as a sword to attack the conservative & complacent French film industry, Truffaut was simultaneously teaching himself the art of film-making the only way he knew how: by watching films. The results were to include some of the most important films ofthe early nouvelle vague, including The 400 Blows, which catapulted its lead actor, Jean-Pierre Léaud, to instant stardom & introduced the world to Truffaut's own semi-autobiographical creation, Antoine Doinel.
In this season of especially imported 35mm prints, The 400 Blows will screen alongside such classics as Jules et Jim, The Bride Wore Black and Day for night (one of the best films on film-making ever made), and works which demonstrate the extraordinary range of Truffaut's lyrical cinema (Mississippi Mermaid, Les Deux anglaises et le continent).
April 16 - 7:00pm
Day for Night
François Truffaut (1973) 115 mins PG
A film-within-a-film, Truffaut’s richly textured homage to the everyday joys, thrills, chaos & torments of filmmaking won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film. Layers abound in this autobiographical epistle: Truffaut himself plays the director of the internal film’s torrid melodrama & its cast includes his alter-ego from the “Antoine Doinel” films, Jean-Pierre Léaud. Seen by many as an excellent return to form, critic Roger Ebert described it as the best film ever made about the movies. With Jacqueline Bisset, Alexandra Stewart & Nathalie Baye.
Imported 35mm print.
April 16 - 9:10pm
The Bride Wore Black
François Truffaut (1968) 107 mins
Predating Kill Bill’s The Bride by several decades, Jeanne Moreau’s black-clad widow remains the original & the best when it comes to vengeance-seeking femme fatales. After 5 men make a young bride a widow on her wedding day, she takes her revenge by methodically killing each of them using various, increasingly inventive, methods. Despite its cool stylistic viciousness & excellent performances, the film received a hostile reception on its original French release. Based on Cornell Woolrich’s novel, Truffaut’s exciting Hitchcockian homage features an evocative Bernard Herrmann score.
Imported 35mm print.
April 23 - 7:00pm
Mississippi Mermaid
François Truffaut (1969) 123 mins M
Truffaut’s transposition & updating of Cornell Woolrich’s tale of a wealthy tobacco planter (Jean-Paul Belmondo) whose mail-order bride (Catherine Deneuve) is much more of a handful than he bargained for. Mixing noir with preposterous romantic melodrama, & Hitchcock with Renoir, Truffaut creates a complex mélange of guilt, obsession & l’amour fou replete with copious cinematic references. This strange fairytale for adults is an apt emblem for the conclusion of the 1st decade of the French New Wave.
April 23 - 9:10pm
Jules et Jim
François Truffaut (1961) 105 mins PG
Truffaut once described Henri-Pierre Roché’s source novel as “the perfect hymn to love & perhaps to life”, & his exquisite & supremely energetic adaptation is, along with Godard’s Breathless, the most famous film of the early nouvelle vague, sporting several of the most cherished scenes in cinematic history. Set before, during & after WWI, the film tells the story of a love triangle between 2 friends (Oskar Werner & Henri Serre) & an impulsive woman. As Catherine, the object of the titular characters’ affections, Jeanne Moreau is unforgettable.
Imported 35mm print.
April 30 - 7:00pm
The 400 Blows
François Truffaut (1959) France 99 mins PG
Truffaut’s debut feature was a critical triumph at Cannes in 1959 & the 1st in a long collaboration between him & actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. Credited as one of the founding films of the French New Wave, it is a beautifully realised & emotionally wrenching tale about a young delinquent & his struggle against the oppressive regime of adults. Truffaut dedicates this film to the then recently deceased critic André Bazin, whose mentorship in cinema saved him from his own troubled adolescence.
Imported 35mm print.
April 30 - 8:50pm
Les Deux Anglaises et le continent
François Truffaut (1971) 124 mins
Truffaut transforms Henri-Pierre Roché’s (Jules et Jim) tale of 2 English girls smitten by with a young Frenchman into one of the most physical of films about love. Utilising the restricted palette of early 2-tone Technicolor (supremely lensed by Nestor Almendros) Truffaut produces the most eloquent of frissons in which the sense of a world vanishing can be etched on a lover’s face. With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Kika Markham & Stacey Tendeter. Music by Georges Delerue. Restored full-length version.
Imported 35mm print.
SUPPORTED BY:
