Hitchcockian: François Truffaut 's The Soft Skin (1964)

 ...For the Vive la France Blogathon...

35 years after his death in 1984, François Truffaut is best known today as the most successful of the youthful filmmakers to emerge from the nouvelle vague (New Wave) movement that swept French cinema in the late 1950s. But before he would write and direct his first full-length feature in 1959, Truffaut would make his name as an enfant terrible critic at the influential post-war film journal Cahiers du cinema (Notebooks on Cinema). It was Truffaut who authored a famous/infamous January 1954 article, an impassioned and polemic piece, that advanced the “auteur theory.”  This theory maintains that auteur films reflect the filmmaker’s personal/artistic vision and possess an identifiable style along with recurring themes and motifs. Alfred Hitchcock, a director revered by Cahiers’ young critics, personified the auteur concept and Truffaut was one especially smitten with his work. He would author 27 articles on Hitchcock over the course of the 1950s.

TCM's Friday Night Spotlight in July: Francois Truffaut

Francois Truffaut

Friday nights in July are going to be hot, and I’m not talking about the weather where I live. Beginning tonight and on the 12^th, 19^th and 26^th, Turner Classic Movies will feature hour after hour of the films of one of the pioneers and masters of the French New Wave, Francois Truffaut (1932 – 1984). Film Critic David Edelstein of New York Magazine and NPR’s Fresh Air, hosts the series.