ESSAYS
Truffaut — Provisional, Definitive
At first a critic, famous for his essay
»A Certain tendency of the French Cinema«, already with
his first feature film, the short film Les mistons (1958),
Truffaut demonstrated the skill of meaning shading with
subtle mise en scene methods, fitted rhythm and lighting
and the critical use of narrative and presentation conventions
which determine his entire opus. Mostly working with his
permanent collaborators, for example the director’s assistant
Suzanne Schiffman, the composer Georges Delerue, the cameramen
Raoul Coutard and Nestor Almendros and the actor Jean-Pierre
Leaud, and always within his company, he said he made only
the films he wanted to make.
The presentation of protagonists’
intentions to establish themselves within the symbolic
order — the school (Les quatre cents coups), the army (Baisers
volés), the father authority (L’Histoire d’Ad#le H.), the
scientific discourse (Une belle fille comme moi), the film
industry (La nuit américaine), the totalitarian society
(Fahrenheit 451, Le Dernier métro) or the civilization
in general (Les mistons) — as well as the juxtaposition
of fanatic loyalty in a love relationship to unsteadiness
and constant change of partners (Tirez sur le pianiste,
Jules et Jim, La peau douce, La mariée était en noir, La
sir#ne du Mississipi, Les deux Anglaises et le continent,
L’homme qui aimait les femmes, La chambre verte, La femme
d’à côt#, Vivement dimanche!), emphasizes the dialectical
connection between the given and the desired and by emphasizing
the temporary success of provisional solutions as opposed
to the limiting and destructive effect of the use of rigid
patterns it demonstrates that the adjustment and the adoption
of symbolic codes is the only way to establish the identity.
The necessity to surpass binary oppositions, often presented
as a disruption of the love couple’s symmetry by introducing
the third person, with a structurally open end, as well
as the constant subversion of spectators’ expectations,
turn the focus to the artificiality of the fictional structure
and at the same time demonstrate the impossibility of reaching
the definite resolution as a stimulus for further quest.
By means of continuous basic structure’s variations through
various theme and motif patterns and procedures, Truffaut’s
films elaborate the combination of the provisional and
the definite as a permanent intention of self-realization
within the film tradition in consistence with his own request
that »the film should express either the delight or the
agony of filming it«.
Tomislav Brlek |
