François Truffaut (1932-1984) was a young fervent cinéphile in Paris, founder of a cine-club, and great admirer of Jean Renoir (1894-1972) who inspired him to embrace the vocation of filmmaker. Just like Satyajit Ray

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WHO IS FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT ?
François Truffaut (1932-1984) was a young fervent cinéphile in Paris, founder of a cine-club, and great admirer of Jean Renoir (1894-1972) who inspired him to embrace the vocation of filmmaker. Just like Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) in Kolkata around the same historical turning point in cinema history, both spearheads of a New Wave in their respective country. He began watching movies at 8, spent most of his teenage at Henri Langlois’ Cinémathèque where he will discover the masterpieces of world cinema. He learnt his film culture as an autodidact. His career as a charismatic and polemical film critic spans between 1950 and 1958, notably at Cahiers du cinema under the direction of André Bazin. He published in 1966 an authoritative book-length interview with Alfred Hitchcock. His autobiographical début feature : Les quatre cents coups [The 400 Blows] (1959) won the Best Director award in Cannes. He was also Jean-Luc Godard’s co-writer on À bout de souffle [Breathless] (1960). His famous œuvre includes : Jules et Jim (1962), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), La Nuit Américaine [Day for night] (1973).
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More than half a century ago, in 1954, Truffaut publishes at 21 years old the most important article in French film criticism (still frequently discussed to this day).

In what would become the mythic magazine Cahiers du cinéma – three years after its first issue – this article titled “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français” [A certain tendency of French cinema] (1)

will cause a ground breaking revolution for the film industry in France and for the film press in the world in the following years. A rare instance when film criticism wrote history before it happened; calling the end of an era and the advent of a new generation of aspiring filmmakers.

In 1967, Andrew Sarris, who imported and developed the Auteur theory in the USA, published the first translation in Cahiers du Cinema in English. (2)

André Bazin (whose 50th death anniversary was honored in November 2008), founder of Cahiers and one of the main fathers of film theory, encouraged Truffaut to improve his essay-manifesto for over a year, because it was already a controversial battle within the editorial board, before it was made public. Alexandre Astruc and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze were opposed to its publication because it was insulting to their friends in the cinema milieu. Bazin supported Truffaut’s endeavour without sharing his rebellious animosity against the current taste shared by the elder generation.

Truffaut was one of the “young Turks”, as were called the new Cahiers recruits : Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Rivette, Chabrol. This band of troublemakers turned out to be amongst the most significant film critics in France and grew up to make the legendary masterpieces of La Nouvelle Vague [the French New Wave] (1958-1962), renowned in cinephilic circles the world over. These young trainee-critics, aged between 22 and 26 in 1954 (except Rohmer who was 34), didn’t just get lucky to crossover from journalism to production to make some random movies. Imagine a journal written by masters of cinema, right before their prime. This small team of enthusiastic writers produced the most insightful criticism precisely because all of them were to become, not any film director, but canonical figures of film history.

This article and the concept of the auteur it contains, this group of young critics and the new style of filmmaking they will propose, embodied a major turning point. These few years of reform will have a dramatic influence ever after throughout international cinematography. Giving hope to a new generation of artists, free of the long-lived constraints of the mainstream establishment. New kinds of stories, new young filmmakers, new methods of production, new mentality in the filmpress. It was all part of a larger wind of change : Free Cinema (1953-1966) which started in parallel in the UK with the magazine Sight & Sound ; the New Indian Cinema (1955) most notably in West Bengal ; the Japanese New Wave (1956) which began separately ; Nuevo Cine (1957) in Argentina ; New American Cinema (1960) in the USA around the magazine Film Culture ; Nuevo Cine (1962) in Spain ; Cinema Novo (1962-1969) in Brazil ; Novo Cinema (1963-1974) in Portugal ; the Prague Spring (1963-1968) in Czech Republic ; Direct Cinema (1963) in Canada ; New Hollywood (1967) in the USA… So were the developments in the decade following this key article.

François Truffaut opens his article with these words :

“These notes have no object other than to define a certain tendency of French cinema, a tendency spoken of as psychological realism and to sketch out some of its limitations. While the French film industry produces about a hundred films every year, it is of course understood that only ten or twelve merit retaining the attention of critics and film-lovers, and the attention thus of this magazine Cahiers. These ten or twelve films make up what has been referred to notably as The Tradition of Quality. By their ambition, they compel the admiration of the foreign press, twice every year defending France’s colours at Cannes and Venice where, since 1946, they have quite regularly corralled medals, golden lions and grand prizes. [..]“  (3)

After World War II, the Press establishment used to praise “La Tradition de Qualité” [Tradition of Quality] represented by the likes of Jean Delannoy (La Symphonie Pastorale, 1946), Yves Allegret (Les Démons de l’aube, 1946), René Clément (Jeux Interdits [Forbidden Games], 1952), Claude Autant-Lara (Le Blé en Herbe, 1954) … Good films with public success and critical recognition that the young Truffaut will boldly attack for their very safe and solemn academism. They are technically irreproachable on the surface, but no one before him looked past their professionalism. The accomplishments pre-war French cinema was praised for (”talented adaptation” and the “faithfulness to the spirit of the novel”) are seriously questioned here to highlight the absence of filmic expression which must differentiate Cinema from Literature.
Truffaut methodically outlines three flaws of this selection of trendy directors. According to him these films are “scenarists’ films”, they are mediocre literary adaptations and the new style of “psychological realism” they represent is deceiving.

He thought his favourite films by Abel Gance, Jean Renoir, Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson, Max Ophüls… were unfairly neglected by the film press, thus his article demonstrated in a truly critical manner how they were superior in every points. He incorporates to his dialectic the rhetorical questions from his detractors, thus precedes the polemic. He directly offers to the readers both sides of the argument and explains clearly why the old guard of film critics (including the founders of Cahiers, Bazin and Doniol-Valcroze, his employers) were wrong. In hindsight, his subjective taste rightfully preferred these who made it to the Pantheon of cinema history to those who fell into near oblivion. His manifesto, branded “La Politique des Auteurs” [The Policy of Auteurs], became thereafter the core value of Cahiers : the defence of cinema made by filmmakers identified as “Auteurs”. Cinema as an art made by a filmic artist and not by a writer.

John Hess: “In fact much of Truffaut’s subsequent writing about the French cinema consisted of vitriolic attacks on the established commercial cinema in France. Truffaut accused it most of all of lacking ambition, stifling inspiration, keeping its best directors un- and underemployed, and, naturally enough, preventing young men from making films until they had served a long and deadening apprenticeship in the industry.”  (4)

The three flaws of “Tradition of Quality” isolated by this violent diatribe :

1. SCENARISTS’ FILMS

The idea behind his manifesto was to spread out the idea brewing amongst the Young Turks at Cahiers to put the director back at the centre of the creative process of a movie, and steal the thunder reserved to the great pre-war scenarists (like Jacques Prévert and Henri Jeanson who he admired nonetheless). To put an end to the domination of literary writers and prepare the scene for a new era where the auteur will get in the limelight.

Truffaut : “The subject of these notes is limited to an examination of film solely in point of view of screenplays and scenarists. But I think I should state that directors are and should want to be responsible for the scenarios and the dialogue that they delineate. “Films of writers”, I wrote earlier, and indeed Aurenche and Bost will not contradict me. When they hand in their screenplay, the film is finished. The director, in their eyes, is the gentleman who puts frames around that screenplay. And alas that is the truth. [..]“  (3)

There he notes the recurrence of novel adaptations in the previous decade, and the habit to build a film around the work of the scriptwriter. He cites the examples of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, a duo of prominent French scriptwriters involved in the majority of the production in this period, and proceeds to carefully pick apart their repetitive method. Incidentally, Pierre Bost was also a journalist writing reviews in this period.

Truffaut : “The process called equivalence is the touchstone of adaptation as Bost and Aurenche practice it. This process assumes that there are in the novel being adapted scenes that are filmable and scenes that are not filmable and that instead of eliminating the latter (as was done not too long ago), scenes should be invented that the writer of the novel might have written for a film version.

“To invent without betraying” is the order of the day that Aurenche and Bost like to cite, forgetting that one can also betray by omission. [..]”

Another major problem exerted here was the rampant trend of movies based on successful novels of legendary fame, since before World War II and especially in the decade before the writing of this article. Scenarists claim the right to dishonest adaptation on the ground that some parts of a novel are unfilmable. The poetic licence, or filmic licence if you will, is their “alibi” to excuse the liberties taken with the precise style of literary masters such as André Gide, Georges Bernanos or Raymond Radiguet. But a movie cannot be just an illustration of the original novel.

2. LITERARY ADAPTATIONS

In his demonstration he draws a comparison between the unshot script of Jean Aurenche and the finished film of Robert Bresson both adaptated from Bernanos’ “Journal d’un curé de campagne” [Diary of a country priest], studies with the reader a particular scene and shows the antagonism opposing the motivations of scenarists and auteurs. Aurenche a poor scenarist. Bresson a grand auteur. He concludes :

Truffaut : “All of this points out that Aurenche and Bost are writers of openly anti-clerical films, but as films featuring cassocks are the current fad, they have taken to bowing to this fashion. But – they think – that in order to not betray their convictions, the thesis of blasphemy and profanation, the dialogue of double-entendres, they prove, here and there, to their clique that they know the art of “fooling the producer” while giving him satisfaction, as well as “fooling” the equally satisfied audience.
This process deserves the name “alibism”: it is excusable and its use is a necessity in an epoch when one is required to constantly feign stupidity in order to work intelligently. But if it is only fair to “fool the producer”, is it not a bit outrageous to thus “re-write” Gide, Bernanos and Radiguet ?
In truth, Aurenche and Bost work like all the screenwriters of the world [..] In their mind, the whole story is comprise of the characters A D C D. At the heart of this equation all is organized by function of criteria known about them alone. The sleeping around occurs according to a collective symmetry, some characters disappear as others are invented, little by little the script distances itself from the original becoming something that is rough yet glossy, step by step, a new film makes its solemn entry into the Tradition of Quality.

- You will tell me : “We’ll agree that Aurenche and Bost are not faithful, but do you then deny their talent?” Talent, indeed, is not a function of fidelity, but I can imagine a worthy adaptation only if written by a man of cinema. Aurenche and Bost are basically men of literature and I criticize them here for holding film in contempt by underestimating it. They behave toward the scenario like someone who thinks that they are reforming a delinquent by finding him work. They always believe “doing their best” by paring its subtleness, that science of nuance that makes short shrift of modern novels. [..]

- Secrets are kept for only a short time, recipes are revealed, new scientific knowledge becomes the subject of papers at the Academy of Science and since, according to Aurenche and Bost, adaptation is an exact science, one day it will be necessary that they apprise us in the name of what standard, in accordance with what system, with what internal, mysterious geometry of the work, they cut, add to, multiply, divide and “repair” masterpieces?
Once having expressed the idea that these equivalences are only timid tricks to skirt the problem, to resolve on the sound track problems that concern image, a good cleaning in order to no longer get on the screen anything except for the knowledgeable framing, complicated lighting, polished photography, now all the perennials of “the tradition of quality”, it is time to examine the films adapted by and with dialogue by Aurenche and Bost. and to seek the persistence of certain ideas which explain without justifying the constant infidelity of these two screenwriters for the works that they take for “pretext” and “opportunity”. [..]

Thus the skill of the promoters of the Tradition of Quality to chose only subjects which lend themselves to the misunderstandings on which the whole system rests. Under the cover of literature, and, of course, of quality, they give the public its dose of darkness, non-conformity and facile audaciousness.” (3)

3.  PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM

The major pre-war movement in France was “Le Réalisme Poétique” [Poetic Realism] sported by directors Marcel Carné and Julien Duvivier, with the talented scenarists Henri Jeanson and Jacques Prévert. Its derivative successor : “Le Réalisme Psychologique” [Psychological Realism] was the mainstream style of postwar French cinema. Both were pretty conventional and commercial, relying on “traditional stage acting, static camera, invisible editing, dependence on scripts and dialogue, and elaborate sets”. (4)

Truffaut : “There are scarcely only seven or eight screenwriters working regularly in French cinema. Each of these screenwriters has only one story to tell and each aspires to the success at the “deux grands”, and it is no exaggeration to say that the one hundred or so French films shot each year recount the same story: the victim, in general, a cuckold. [..] The deceit of those close to him and the devote hatred borne between his family members, lead the hero to his ruin, the injustice of life and for local colour, the meanness of all others (the priest, caretakers, neighbors, passers-by, the rich and the poor, the soldiers etc.) [..]

This school which aims for realism always destroys it right at the exact moment of reaching it so anxious is it to contain its characters in a sealed-off world, barricaded there by formulas, word games, and maxims rather than let them appear as they are right in front of our eyes. The artist cannot always dominate his work. He is sometimes its God, other times its creature. One knows the modern play whose main character, in peak form when the curtain rises, finds himself fully amputated as the play ends, as a successive loss of each of his limbs has marked the changing of acts. [..]”  (3)

In my next article, we’ll look at what Truffaut means by “auteur” and “mise-en-scène”, two key terms in La Politique des Auteurs that will re-affirm cinema as a proper art, and put film criticism on the map of serious art studies.

HarryTuttle
Feb 2009, Paris, France.
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Notes:
1. François Truffaut, “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français”, Cahiers du cinéma #31, January 1954. (Table of content in PDF at the Cahiers online archive. (Online in French here)
2. Cahiers du Cinema in English, #1, 1967, Andrew Sarris.
3. English version cited (with my minor corrections) is available online here.
4. John Hess, La politique des auteurs, Jump Cut, #1 & 2, 1974. Online here : page 1, page 2.
References:
- René Prédal, La critique de cinéma, Ed. Armand Colin, 2004
- Francesco Casetti, Teorie del cinema (1945-1990), Ed. Armand Colin, 2005

Tags: Auteur Theory, Cahier Du Cinema, Francios Truffaut, French New Wave, Harrytuttle, Indian Cinema

Posted By Harrytuttle | Friday, October 9th, 2009 | Filed under Auteur, Film Education