Truffaut

What is it about Francois Truffaut that makes him such a wonderful filmmaker? I took the afternoon today to watch and absorb his first film, The 400 Blows, and this question has been in my head since then. I pose the question seriously, not in any condescending sense. His films are beautiful and poignant. They have a way of elevating one's spirit. But he is a simple filmmaker. He does not do this by any manipulation or by technical spectacle, but he finds stories that are pulled from a collective consciousness of experiences to make films bothe fantastic and relatable for everyone.

So what is it about Truffaut that makes him such a fine auteur? I think  first and foremost it is the word auteur. It is found within the theory projected by all those involved with Truffaut and contemporaries' new wave filmmaking, the theory that a director is the author of his films, and that he leaves an indelible fingerprint on his films. He took it farther. As writer of most of his films he allowed himself to be an even stronger "author" of his style in filmmaking. He believed that the director had not just the ability, but the responsibility to make a unique piece of art, reflective of one's own style. He believed it and he lived and created by it.

He also understood the medium from two different perspectives. He understood it as an artist and a creator, but also - thanks to his years at Les Cahiers du Cinema - as a critic and an analyst. He understood film in both theory and application. He was a harsh critic of the current French cinema, and as such he - along with his fellow new wave filmmakers - made films in direct opposition to the current trends in filmmaking. He understood from a critical standpoint where other films were going wrong, and as an artist he understood how make it right. His personal beliefs of the ability and responsibility of a director and his understanding on different levels of the art of film are two of the strong components that make hims such a fine artist. 

Then we have his actual ability manifest in his films. His artistry was nearly unparalleled. His stories, while often lacking the traditional three-act structure as we recognize it, were always well-crafted and well-realized. They were somehow always relatable enough, even in his more fantastic of films. His stories all seemed to find a way to reach down into the heart of each viewer and pull their individual experiences out to be examined and re-experienced. While few among may have experienced the rejection and neglect of Antoine in our own lives, it is told in such a way that our own childhood isolations - no matter how small - are brought to the surface, having us experience life alongside Antoine, instead of simply watching it. He crafts wonderful reflections of our experiences.

His camerawork is what astounded me in this last viewing. His camera is a casual observer to the situation, very unassuming and devoid of any flourishes that take away from experiencing the story. When he does use the occasional technical flourish, it's for a reason and it is arresting. In the 400 Blows he uses no establishing shots, which is a subtle change but has huge impact. An establishing shot will show us the entire school building before entering the classroom, the home before the bedroom or the restaurant's name before panning in to the couple at the table. Establishing shots have become an easy way of identifying something to the audience. It spells it out for us. Worse yet, it has become a substitution for mood: show us point-blank a location and expect the mood to be evoked by a flash of identification. Truffaut uses no establishing shots. On each cut he takes us immediately to our characters, and to our stories, there is no wasted time to have it painted out to us. He has two shots in the film that I would consider for Truffaut his establishing shots: at the beginning of the film we see Paris from the streets and when we shift to the juvenile camp we have a brief shot of the school with a supertitle before the class exits. Both of his locations, Paris and the camp are full characters in the film. It is for this reason, I believe, that he has no large need for establishing shots. I believe the realism of the film is greatly aided by his lack of establishing shots. There is no halt of the story in order to show us where we are, we simply see and we simply know it. 

His few technical flourishes in the film become completely breathtaking after a film of such unassuming camerawork. The final shot of the film is well-known, but what stunned me the most this time around was the transition after Antoine's meeting with the psychiatrist. The slight freeze with the dissolve was absolutely stunning, and it allowed the mood of the scene - the heartbreak and abandon - to linger just that much longer.

To me, that dissolve illustrates what works so well about Truffaut and his work. It shows a perfect synthesis between technical proficiency and artistic excellence. The dissolve is technically well-conceived, but is a wonderful moment of art that evokes reaction and emotion. And it succeeds on every level.