Francois Truffaut Interview American Film magazine May 1976 Κινηματογραφικά

 

Francois Truffault

Interview

American Film magazine May 1976

Κινηματογραφικά

 

 

 

The director as director in Day for Night, Truffaut’s wryly comic tribute to filmmaking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Francois Truffaut’s origins have been well publicized: A career of juvenile delinquency, reform school, rescue by the eminent critic Andre Bazin, a spectacularly youthful career as a critic for Cahiers du Cinema. But of the Angry Young Men of Cahiers who went off to make iconoclastic films, Truffaut’s have been both technically reticent — no Godardian revolution —and more obviously indebted to tradition.

    His autobiographical The 400 Blows, for example, was immediately compared to Vigo’s Zero de conduite, and Truffaut has long acknowledged Renoir as his idol. Truffaut, unlike Godard, has also shunned politics and social comment in his films — “The characters in a film interest me more than the story,” he once said, “so I can’t make a film of ideas.”

   Truffaut is preeminently a director of characters, with a loving concern for the weak, the young, the roguish. And he is a director of details — offhand gestures, sudden intimacies, the bits and pieces that revealingly clutter lives. “I like everything which muddles the trail, everything which sows doubt.”

   Truffaut once playfully wrote in Esquire: “I am the happiest of men. I make my daydreams come true, and I get paid for it.” That New Wave exuberance in filmmaking, mellowed and even soured in others, has never left him.

  At his seminar, Truffaut spoke in French, and Eva Lothar, an AFI Fellow, acted as interpreter. Truffaut’s responses have been translated for American Film by Maria Enrico.

 

 

 

Question: Are there any directors who make films in Hollywood whose work you admire?

 

Truffaut: Oh yes. Milos Forman. He’s making American films.

 

Question: Would you do a film here?

 

Truffaut: I would really like to do a film in French here. I receive one or two scripts every month from Hollywood. I always read them, or someone helps me read them. And I am happy because usually it’s not my kind of material. I suppose if there were something I really liked, it would be a problem. Had I received, for example, the screenplay for Paper Moon, I think I would have wanted to say yes, because I really liked the relationship between the little girl and the thief. Unfortunately, they send me stories on Prohibition, on Zelda Fitzgerald.

 

Question: With your interest in films on children, have you ever thought of doing Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye ?

 

Truffaut: No. I think that it really belongs to Salinger and that you really shouldn’t make a film of it. I feel the same about Proust. There are some books which I think should remain books, when one is almost sure that the film could not be better or even as good.

 

Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve in Mississippi Mermaid, based on the Cornell Woolrich novel.

 

 

Question: Where do you get your scripts?

 

Truffaut: From newspapers, or in books. The Story of Adele H. was from new information on the Hugo family. When I make films about children they usually are subjects I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I could make a film on children every year because I feel it’s an inexhaustible subject, but I hold back because I don’t want to become specialized.

 

 

 

Question: How did you come upon the story for Adele H.?

 

Truffaut: It’s an unknown story in France. The books of Victor Hugo always speak of Leopoldine, but never of Adele, probably because she was insane. It was a little like a family secret. I found documentation on Adele thanks to an American woman, a professor of French literature at Wooster College in Ohio, Frances Guille. She unfortunately died two months ago.

 

Question: Without seeing Adele!

 

Truffaut: She had seen it. She had been interested in the Hugo family for twenty years. She made a thorough investigation of Adele. She even took the trip from Halifax to Barbados and was able to reconstruct just about everything that happened to Adele, things even the Hugo family didn’t know.

 

Question: Was the diary of Adele H. ever decoded?

 

Truffaut: Mrs. Guille started to decode it, but she only found the part of the diary written at Guernsey. What was written in Halifax or at the hospital was not found — or what she wrote at the hospital of Saint Mande, if I’m right, didn’t make any sense.

Isabelle Adjani, asAdele, daughter of Victor Hugo, in Truffaut’ s The Story of Adele H.

 

 

Question: As I watched Adele H. I kept thinking of Empress Carlotta, who traveled to Mexico and went mad. A coincidence?

 

Truffaut: Accidental. I myself sometimes thought of Bette Davis.

 

Question: Did you intend to do a panegyric on love for love’s sake?

 

 

Truffaut: The idea was to make a film about love involving only one person. That was the first idea. The second idea was to make a film that had a maximum of inner violence. Emotional violence. How can I say it — I’m not happy about what happens to Adele.

Question: Were you entirely satisfied with your ending to Adele H. ?

 

Truffaut: I think it’s the part I like best. In fact, to give you a more serious answer, the ending was done in response to some observations that reviewers had made about The Wild Child. I was reproached for not showing what happened to the child afterward. So this time I said, “If they want particulars, I’ll give them particulars.”

 

Question: In the scene in the house where Adele is rejected by her lover, there is an enormous display of emotions. How did you evoke that?

 

Truffaut: It was very difficult because I realized when the actors started to rehearse, that the scene wasn’t written well. I had a very talented actress who could show her emotions, but the text didn’t move well. Anyway, we shot it without cutting; in the film it looked like lots of shots, but it’s because I cut it afterward with the different takes. But I let the scene be played out almost completely, up to the moment when she goes up the stairs.

 

Question: When you realized the scene wasn’t written the way you wanted, did you rewrite it?

 

Truffaut: It wasn’t possible then, unfortunately, because there was an English actor who already had had a lot of trouble learning his lines. But otherwise, I think that, yes, you must change the text sometimes.

 

Question: Did you feel that the fact that Adele H. was a woman in any way determined what happened to her?

 

Truffaut: No, because I know some men who are in exactly the same situation.

 

Question: In one scene, Adele lies about her name to a little boy. Then she returns, gives him her real name, and the camera stays on the child for a long time. Why?

 

Truffaut: I didn’t think it was too long. It’s more delicate than having dissolves and similar things because that helps the image.

 

Question: You didn’t use dissolves?

 

Truffaut: No, I didn’t, but then the length of the shot shows that the scene is finished. In this film we tried, most of the time, to do dissolves while shooting.

 

Question: How did you work with your cameraman, Nestor Almendros?

 

Truffaut: I asked Nestor Almendros to shoot because he is the cameraman I admire most. I’ve made fourteen-fifteen films, and I find that the only ones that are beautiful to look at are the ones I did with Almendros. He is especially great with period films, with candles and oil lamps. We got together and agreed that Adele H. should be subdued, that there should be nothing white, and nothing that shines. We agreed on not showing the sky, nor the sun, as much as possible. But he deserves all the credit for the photography.

 

Question: By the way, do you follow the practice of attaching a videotape camera to your 35mm camera in order to see rushes immediately?

 

Truffaut: Never did it, never did it. It bothers me a bit. It’s like Polaroid pictures. I like to take pictures of my children and go pick them up fifteen days later at the store.

 

Question: How important is the dialogue versus the image for you? Rather often now, one sees a lessening in the importance of the dialogue and an increase in the importance of the image.

 

Truffaut: I don’t see any competition between image and dialogue in my films.

 

Question: In the films of others ?

 

Truffaut: I don’t know. Bergman’s films, for example, are very interesting visually, and there is often a lot of dialogue. I don’t think that films are purer when the characters stop talking. One of my favorite Hitchcock films is Dial M for Murder, and people speak throughout it. And yet the mise-en-scene is fantastic in this film.

 

Question: But in general, dialogue does seem to be sacrificed to image.

 

Truffaut: Oh yes, especially in karate films. But that’s an extreme case.

 

Question: What do you think of dubbed films?

 

Truffaut: I think that when a film gets dubbed, it means it’s a relatively good film, that it’s selling well. And I think it’s as true for French films as it is for American ones: Dubbing does very little harm to a serious film. But when the film is a comedy dubbing can ruin it.

 

Question: One edition of your screenplays includes your notes to the screenwriters. Do you communicate with them that way?

 

Truffaut: Yes. Sometimes I prefer to work that way, almost by correspondence.

 

Question: Which of your films do you prefer?

 

Truffaut: No, no. I don’t like to classify them. I have a preference for the ones I shoot in the country. But I won’t answer. I would only answer with a lot of contradictions.

 

Question: Do you do much preparation before shooting?

 

Truffaut: I work very little before shooting. Therefore a lot is left to chance. And yet I would always like to achieve some kind of perfection, which is impossible to obtain in film even when you work a lot. So it’s a contradiction. The other thing is that I work with two kinds of topics: small ones and large ones. What I mean to say is that when I have finished a film, my greatest desire wouldn’t be to start all over again, but to do a remake of the film. If it’s a small topic, I know that I could do a remake in three years and no one could tell it was a remake. If it’s, let’s not say a necessarily big topic, but a specific one, I know that I couldn’t do a remake for at least fifteen years. For example, I would really like to redo Day for Night, but I can’t. I think that Day for Night said a lot of things about filmmaking but it didn’t say enough about acting.

 

Question: You would show more of that?

 

Truffaut: Yes, much more.

 

Question: You are a director. Why did you act in Day for Night ?

 

Truffaut: Probably to play the part of a director a bit like me.

 

Question: Did your dual roles create any problems?

 

Truffaut: No, it wasn’t too difficult. It made me feel more playful. The problem was that sometimes after I had finished acting I would say “cut” too soon. So after a while I told my assistant, Suzanne Schiffman, to say “cut” for me. It’s a fact that actors are always impatient, eager to finish.

 

Question: Because of the film’s special nature, did you have less of a script for Day for Night than your other films?

 

Truffaut: The outline was already there before shooting, but the dialogue was written each week on Sunday. Exactly like the scene where I’m with the script girl. I work like that.

 

Question: If you were to remake Adele H. , what would you do?

 

Truffaut: I couldn’t say. I’ll tell you in two years. If she weren’t Victor Hugo’s daughter, I think there would be a very interesting way of doing the story without showing the lieutenant at all. But I couldn’t do it because I don’t want to have two people missing from the film.

 

Question: I think I would only need to see the lieutenant once or twice to understand that relationship. From then on I would like to explore her in her daily being in terms of her breakdown. In the film, one learns of her state of mind not through the persons she meets, but through her diary.

 

Truffaut: Because she is secretive, yes. It’s an unusual script because it’s a situation that doesn’t move. And that’s something I am very interested in. I wanted the audience to react emotionally to the monotony and the repetition. I know that the second scene at the bank is more interesting than the first, and that the third is more interesting than the second. It’s the same thing with the scenes at the bookshop. I think the courageous way to have made this film would have been to make it three hours long, taking the chance that people would leave after an hour. That’s what happens with O’Neill’s plays.

 

Question: And what would you do if you took the character of the lieutenant out?

 

 

Truffaut: I don’t like the audience to be confused. I would make sure that no one thought the lieutenant was imagined; that is, even if I didn’t show him, I would give some indication that he existed. But this would work only if there were no Victor Hugo.

 

Question: What is the nature of your collaboration with Suzanne Schiffman?

 

Truffaut: Suzanne Schiffman studied in Chicago, was a continuity girl starting with Jacques Rivette’s first film Paris nous appartient, in all of Godard’s films, starting with Le petit soldat, and in all of mine starting with Shoot the Piano Player. Since I spoke much more with her than with the rest of the crew, the first assistant was always very unhappy. So starting with The Wild Child I asked her to be my assistant. After that, because she helped me on Sundays in redoing scripts, she became script¬ writer.

 

Question: Will she ever make a film of her own?

 

Truffaut: No, she refuses to. Not even a short.

 

Question: What were the first reactions to the New Wave films you, Godard, and others presented?

 

Truffaut: During the first year the public, then the public and reviewers together, thought that the New Wave films were great. And then the next year they thought they were all bad. Virtually every first film from our group, if you can call it a group, was well received. The problem always came with the second film. I was less anxious with my second film, because I felt I’d been accepted as a director. But it was the second film, Shoot the Piano Player, that presented a lot of difficulties because it took me six months to get it shown. The tone of the film wasn’t understood. It was finally better understood here than there; that is, it was better understood by foreigners.

 

Question: You were a great friend of Jean-Luc Godard. What do you think of what he’s doing now, for example his new film, Number Two ?

 

Truffaut: I liked Number Two. I haven’t seen the ones done in the preceding two or three years. But Number Two is very good.

 

 

 

Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim,

adapted from Henri-Pierre Roche’s autobiographical novel.

 

 

Question: Jules and Jim has always been one of my favorite films. How much of it was tailored to Jeanne Moreau?

 

Truffaut: I wasn’t thinking of her when I originally wanted to do the film. It happened gradually. But I think I was able to do the film thanks to her because it was a subject that frightened me very much. I could have done it as a first film. I could have done it as a second film. But something was always making me postpone. Every once in a while Jeanne Moreau would come to see me and very discreetly say, “Well, what’s happening with this book you showed me that was so good?”

 

Question: If you weren’t thinking of Jeanne Moreau at first, did you have a different image of the person who was to play the part?

 

Truffaut: At first I thought it was necessary to have a Scandinavian or German woman.

 

Question: Did you have a physical image of the character?

 

Truffaut: No, no, no.

 

Question: What about the statue that the two men look at?

 

Truffault: It was modeled after Jeann Moreau. Frankly, it wasn’t the best thing in the movie. Oh, it was terrible, really terrible.

 

Question: You said in one of your interviews that you like to work with unknown actors. Are known actors less malleable than unknown ones?

 

Truffaut: No, there are no set rules. For example, sometimes an unknown actor can be much more difficult. Sometimes a woman who is not very beautiful can be a very difficult actress because instead of wanting to play her part well, she wants to look prettier than she really is. That’s only an example.

 

Question: How do you work with actors, before shooting, during shooting? Jeanne Moreau has her own viewpoint. Now we can compare views.

 

Truffaut: I know what she tells. Jeanne Moreau always says that when we work together, she carefully reads all the interviews I give before filming to try to understand what I expect from her. But the question is difficult to answer because I don’t think there are two actors you can speak to in the same way. Some need to know a lot of things, others need purely physical hints, like how to lift their arms or breathe.

 

Question: You don’t have rehearsals?

 

Truffaut: No, never. I don’t know why. It seems to me that the actor will perhaps act differently if the stage is small, if it’s big, if there are doors, windows, if the walls are black, if the walls are light colored. You can’t know all of this ahead of time. I also think that cinema work is much more intimate than theater work. Sometimes, even if I have a very intimate scene, it is only hinted at in the script. The lines don’t say it. I know that with my personality I usually can’t do theater staging because I don’t like the idea that I have to speak to all of the actors at the same time. One actor never knows what I’ve said to another. I don’t say that it is necessarily a good method, but it’s my method. A little hypocrisy, cunning.

 

Question: How do you work with children?

 

Truffaut: The same way. I think that with children you cannot write their dialogue. You give them an idea, tell them what you expect. You can give them the dialogue, but only orally. Then they repeat it, but not always with the words in the right order. No learning by heart. Maybe one can get good results in other ways. I suppose Tatum O’Neal had a set dialogue in Paper Moon, and I thought that was a great performance.

 

Question: Jean-Pierre Leaud gives a very natural performance in The 400 Blows. How much of it was improvised, and how much of it set?

 

Truffaut: With Jean-Pierre Leaud, I soon realized that he himself was a better character than the one in the script. So I chose to change the script a little in order to make it more closely resemble him.

 

Question: Has your relationship with Jean-Pierre Leaud changed?

 

Truffaut: Now he is an actor. I mean, he no longer acts as he did in The 400 Blows. He didn’t know fear then. He acted because it was fun.

 

Question: Is it dangerous for an actor to really identify with his part?

 

Truffaut: I would prefer it if he wouldn’t, but maybe that’s not a courageous answer.

 

Question: As a director you don’t see any advantage to it?

 

Truffaut: There’s a risk that working with the actor will become more difficult.

 

Question: Why?

 

Truffaut: It’s a very interesting question. I think you would have to question the actors with greater care than we usually do. You would have to ask them why they have chosen to act, when are they pleased, and when do they suffer. I would be very interested in having answers to that, because they don’t talk about their own reality. They always talk around it, but they never talk about the real thing.

 

Question: I noticed in three or four of your films that you use the same line of dialogue. The linens: “She has had a lot of men, and I’ve had a few women. Well then, it should be evenly matched.” Would you comment on the use of this line in many of your films?

 

Truffaut: Probably because I like the line very much. Jean Cocteau used to say you shouldn’t be afraid of repeating yourself. He said, “Sometimes at a party I recite entire passages from my books and people say: ‘Well, that’s interesting. It’s worth putting in writing.’ ’’

 

Question: Do you think it’s feasible to attempt a psychoanalysis of a director from seeing his films?

 

Truffaut: Yes, certainly, certainly. Especially when the film’s subject matter is of an emotional nature. I think, for example, that Hitchcock’s films and Bergman’s are very valuable for psychoanalysts. Bunuel’s too.

 

Question: You once said in an interview that when a director starts he makes experimental films, then becomes more and more conscious of film structure and technique, and then tries to make abstract films, but keeps in mind the box office.

 

Truffaut: I don’t recognize myself in those words because I think all films are experimental. Chaplin’s A Countess from Hong Kong, for example, is an experimental film. At the beginning it is intellectual and little by little it becomes concrete. It might be that the concrete part will turn against the intellectual part, and that on screen it will be a monstrosity. So a film is always experimental. As for the box office, sometimes I think the film I’m about to shoot will be successful, for example, the film I am doing about children. Sometimes I think it will be unsuccessful, like Adele. I don’t think about it. I’m not at all interested in the idea of breaking box-office records. But on the other hand, I don’t like having people who trust me lose their money. When we made The Wild Child we thought it would be a very unsuccessful film. When we made Mississippi Mermaid we thought it would be a very successful film. But Wild Child has made more money than Mississippi Mermaid. So I’ve come to have a kind of philosophy: If the film costs less than a million dollars, on principle no one will lose money. But above that there are some very great risks, given my style of working.

 

Question: How much did Adele cost?

 

Truffaut: I don’t remember. About $750,000.

 

Question: Do you think that people will someday look back at your films and find them dated, particularly in acting styles?

 

Truffaut: Oh yes. Already now. But that’s also normal. Films have successive lives. A film made ten years ago shocks us for all kinds of things that are old-fashioned, and twenty years later it doesn’t shock us because we accept it as a piece of history, like a statement on that period. But I think that in respect to form and the meaning of form, Hitchcock’s films have aged the least. You can make any film you want in a train today, and you could never do it as well as The Lady Vanishes. That’s true, isn’t it?

 

Question: When Ingmar Bergman was here he said that if you have nothing personal to say, don’t make films. What do you think?

 

Truffaut: Nevertheless, I think that everyone has something personal to say. But sometimes they don’t dare. It’s much more difficult, for example, to do original scripts than an adaptation. And one must overcome this anxiety because in reality an original script is easier to write than an adaptation. In any case, the result on the screen, in the case of an original script, is always more coherent than with an adaptation. But with so much taking of ideas from one’s self, you get a lot of doubts, and once in a while you would like an idea to come from outside. I might receive one day an idea for a film on Adele Hugo.

 

Question: Would you tell us something about your new film?

 

Truffaut: It’s called L’Argent de poche [literally, “Pocket Money”]. It’s a film I’ve been wanting to do for a long time because previously when I did a film about children, I followed the same child from beginning to end. Here I have twelve interesting characters — which makes it structurally a little like Day for Night. I can’t explain the plot because there are so many smaller stories within it. Mainly I just wanted to show children at all ages, starting from three weeks old and up to twelve years old. In addition, behind these twelve characters there are lots of other children.

 

Question: Why did you stop at twelve?

 

Truffaut: Because I wanted to stop exactly at adolescence.

 

 

 

Films of Francois Truffaut

 

 

 

 

  

 

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Francois Truffaut

Interview

American Film magazine May 1976

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