"After François Truffaut died..." "Anne-Marie Miéville told me" ""Now that he's dead, nobody will protect you."" ""Since he was the only one of the New Wave" ""TWO IN THE WAVE" who was accepted by and tried, in a way, to join the 'establishment."" "How did he protect you?" "In the evening of May 4, 1959 at the Cannes Film Festival," ""The 400 Blows" is screened." "It's a triumph." "After the film, Jean-Pierre Léaud is acclaimed." "The 1959 Cannes Festival consecrates French cinema's "New Wave"." "Newspapers write only of the new French cinema, of rebirth." "At the Château de la Napoule just outside Cannes, the magazine Arts gathers the young directors for a debate and a "family" photo - the first of its kind." "Jean-Luc Godard, hiding behind his glasses, is in the back row." "He's in the shot, but just barely." "While Truffaut, the undisputed star of the Festival, is up front." "In Paris, Jean-Luc Godard had met Georges de Beauregard, one of those producers eager to bet on an unknown filmmaker when youth movies are the fashion." "But Truffaut and Chabrol close the deal." "On May 9th, from Cannes, they each send a note to Beauregard as guarantors" "Truffaut for the screenplay and Chabrol for the direction." "It's a deal." "Backed by his friends, Godard can begin work on Breathless." "Before Cannes and The 400 Blows," "François Truffaut was already famous." "A young star journalist, and a feared critic writing for Cahiers du Cinéma, and in the widely-read Arts, he lampoons French cinema, killed he says by false legends." "He calls this "quality cinema" artificial and uptight weighed down by star actors and heavy studio-based production methods." "He also attacks the Cannes Festival, which he labels backward, academic, and corrupt." "In 1958," "Truffaut is even banned from the Festival." "So his triumph the following year is sweet revenge." "André Malraux, General de Gaulle's new Minister of Culture, was Truffaut's best ally." "Malraux selected The 400 Blows for the Festival, overriding opposition." "Between the new Minister and the "New Wave,"" "an historic alliance seems to be forming." "On the morning of May 2, 1959 Jean-Pierre Léaud arrives in Cannes on the night train from Paris." "The hero of The 400 Blows is just 14 years old." "For the first time, he played the role of Antoine Doinel." "Actor and character are born together." " I'm tired of carrying it!" " It's your turn." "Dad will know I swiped it." " It was your idea." " Yours!" " That's new!" " I don't care, I quit!" "You've lost your mind?" "I gotta take it back to Dad's office." "But I'll wear a hat." "If the guard sees me, he'll think it's a man." "Waiting for the jury's vote," "Jean-Pierre and François who stroll casually up the Croisette, appear amazed by the film's poster." "Journalists follow, scenting a story." "They are right." "Truffaut initiates his creation into Cannes'public rituals of fame." "And the filmmaker gives his first conferences and interviews." "Is The 400 Blows sort of your own story?" "It's partially autobiographical, and what is not autobiographical is biographical." "In other words, everything's real, nothing's made up." "Show me your bread!" "Alright..." "You bit into yours!" "Bring your bread and dish over here." "Put that there." "Left or right?" "Left, sir." "Quiet!" "Now you think you're different, someone else?" "Yes, different since the film." "Interested in new things?" " Yes." " What?" " Mainly cinema." " No movies before?" "I did go to the movies, but I went to have fun, to watch images unreeling." "I went to see anything anywhere." "And now I go to see films because I've heard that they were good or if they are bad, to see the mistakes, to be in the movie business." "Meanwhile in Paris, in the office of Cahiers du Cinéma, where he works as a relatively unknown critic," "Jean-Luc Godard champs at the bit." ""It's disgusting!" "Everybody is in Cannes!" "Why am I here?"" ""I need money to get down to the festival."" ""Truffaut's a bastard." "No thought for me!"" "Godard complains to another critic on the Champs Elysées." "Godard knows he must seize the moment." "Since he reported in Arts the choice of The 400 Blows." ""As soon as the film ended," ""the lights slowly went up in the small theater." ""The silence lengthened." ""Then Philippe Erlanger, of the Quai d'Orsay," ""leaned towards Malraux," ""'Must this film really represent France in Cannes?" "'" ""'But, yes, yes!" "'"" "That's how the Minister of Culture backed the selection committee's decision to send to Cannes, on its own, officially, in the name of France," "The 400 Blows, François Truffaut's first feature film." ""The Truffaut explosion at the Festival the Truffaut bomb, impacted up to the end, and will be felt for a long time." "Just two years ago," ""The 400 Blows would have been an ideal anti-Cannes film, given its director, its style, and the way it was produced."" ""But the film now makes fifty old school producers question themselves and try to produce similar films, marking a key moment in post-war French cinema."" ""The 400 Blows would at its core only be a normal film, proof of François' talent, except that it exploded in the middle of the enemy camp, defeating them from the inside."" "For Léaud, Truffaut is not only a director and Pygmalion." "He is also a sort of protective big brother for him." "He takes him under his wing, exercising a powerful influence." "In some ways, they are similar." "Both from lower class Paris, both desperate to succeed, and to remain themselves." "Jean-Luc Godard, like Claude Chabrol, fooling around here, is from another milieu, dandified, provocative, more of a hussar." "Success, certainly, but with style, like an artist." "But both François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were fascinated by a rogue, a charming crook." "In 1952, Michel Portail was involved in a notorious affair." "On November 24, 1952" "Portail killed a motorcycle gendarme on his way to Le Havre." "Back in Paris, he met an American journalist." "They lived the high life." "Portail was arrested near Place de la Concorde, on the run while in the media spotlight." "He received a life sentence." "In Détective and France-Soir, Truffaut cut out articles about the affair." "He was very excited by it." "And when Godard wants to tempt a producer, he remembers Portail and the idea for a film" "Truffaut had sketched out:" "Breathless." ""If you can finish the story you told me "at the Richelieu-Drouot Metro," ""I could do the dialogues", says Godard." "Truffaut accepts." "He gives Godard his first feature." "As old man Bugatti said:" ""My cars are made to run, not to stop."" "Shit, the pigs!" "Swayed by a few pages and the story," "Beauregard backs Breathless, a Jean-Luc Godard film nothing like Truffaut's original idea." ""I'll let you read the final script soon,"" "Godard writes to Truffaut, right before the shooting starts." ""After all, it's your script." "I think you'll be surprised." "In fact, I don't think you'll like the film even if dedicated to Baby Doll, via Rio Bravo."" ""In brief,"it's the story of a guy who thinks about death and a girl who doesn't."" ""I bumped into a producer I knew." "Georges de Beauregard." "He asked "Any stories for me?"" "I told him the stories and what I wanted to do, but they are not for you no point reading them." "So he said "What?" "Give them to me right away."" "I finally gave them to him and he said:" ""This is exactly for me." "Let's do it!"" "He went bankrupt two months later." "I was broke too, so we both had nothing to lose, everything to gain." ""Monday, dear Georges de Beauregard." "Dawn!" ""The poker game begins." ""I hope it'll bring us some dough..." "Charming old word." ""Thanks for having faith in me." "Apologies in advance "if I am in a bad mood next month." ""I hope our film is beautifully simple" ""or simply beautiful." "I'm terrified." ""I'm all worked up." "It's all okay." ""I'll write as if to my parents," ""and send as a first stake in our game" ""a motto of Guillaume Apollinaire, "Everything Terribly", Jean-Luc Godard." " You're a liar, Michel." " No, lying is stupid." "It's like poker..." "It's better to tell the truth." "The others think you're bluffing, and that's how you win." "What?" "I stare at you until you stop staring at me." "Me too." "Truffaut follows the shooting closely." "His film too." "Here at the Pergola, near the Champs Elysées, he's with Godard and with a young actor, Jean-Paul Belmondo." "I'll put my poster in the bathroom." " Can I phone?" " Yes." " It's not bad here." " Just fine." "You like my poster?" "Not bad." "Renoir is really a great painter." "I said not bad." "Do you think she's prettier than me?" "When you're scared or surprised, or both at once, there's a funny glint in your eyes." " So what?" " I wanna sleep with you again, because of that glint." "It seems interesting." "We've heard about it and the reviews are good." "And... it's a film that has a real meaning." "Ahead of its time, I'd say." " Why are you against it?" " He despises the public." "It's not serious." "Not serious at all." "If you don't like the seaside, if you don't like the mountains," "if you don't like the city, then get stuffed!" "It's awful, it's a farce, it's terrible." "It sets a very bad example!" "I saw Breathless." "It's gratuitous dirt." "It's a little frightening." "Many young people I know look like that." "These open-minded young people, very appealing." "I like the youth." "Unfortunate, but we have to adapt." "The 1960 Jean Vigo Prize for a feature film was just awarded to Mr. Jean-Luc Godard for Breathless." "Are film prizes useful?" "Yes, they can draw attention to cinema, compared to other arts that are less important today, arts that are "breathless" while cinema isn't." "This not yet breathless movement, the New Wave, had been launched a few months prior when the young Cahiers critics decided to direct their own short films." "Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette began it all." "But in the summer of '57," "Truffaut takes up the fragile flame." "He shoots a film in the Nimes countryside with Bernadette Lafont and Gérard Blain:" "The Brats." "When she went to the river, she left her bicycle behind, and we surrounded it." "The Brats got good reviews." "A few articles hail this 20-minute short, for youth, grace, and story-telling." "Truffaut's style is already apparent." "A couple of articles even hint at a coming rebirth of French Cinema." "In February, the magazine Cinema 58 first evokesthe idea of a New Wave, borrowing a term fashionable in sociology." "It's a term used in L'Express by Françoise Giroud in the fall of 1957 to describe French youth, its hopes, its ambitions, its frustrations." " You're leaving?" "Why?" " Because." "Let's have a drink." "It's always the same." "Come on!" "Alright, if you insist, but five minutes, no more." "Godard had also made a few shorts:" "All Boys Are Called Patrick, in June 1957, and Charlotte And Her Boyfriend in 1958 in which Godard had to dub Belmondo's voice himself since the actor was called up to Algeria." "You'll plead with me in vain." "I'll pretend not to hear." "Like that actor, when Simone Simon told him she'd throw herself out the window." " I don't remember..." " It's in a Max Ophüls film." "Shut up, it's all your fault." "The morning we were getting married, if you hadn't overslept..." "We wouldn't have been too late for the Town Hall." "Always the same." "Girls think everything they do is permissible." "Damn!" "It's unforgivable." "I warned you." "You'll fall flat on your face." "I knew you'd come snivelling back." "You're too much." "It'll be a miracle if I forgive you." "There are limits." "Yes, damn it!" "In February 1958, taking advantage of floods south of Paris," "François Truffaut had the idea of shooting another short produced by Pierre Braunberger." "Truffaut wants Brialy and Dim to wander around in the flooded landscape, trying to get back to Paris." "The film was shot in 2 days." "Then he put aside the footage, for a better time." "So, Jean-Luc Godard offers to do something with it." "He edits the footage and writes a funny, flippant, witty and casual commentary, which he records in mid-December 1958." "I imitated Blondin." "If you don't know Blondin, too bad!" "I was scared to be late for class, so I asked for boots." "Yes, my cousin Léon's boots." "The king of accordion." "History of Water is a strange mixed beast, a Truffaut-Godard." "A product of happenstance." "The rapid shooting style of the former and the unique montage and dialogues of the latter make up a sort of creative relay race, a time of complicity." "Did you know that on the French Riviera, after means before?" "You'll tell me to talk about something else that matters." "It reminds me of something from the Sorbonne:" "Aragon lectured on Petrarch." "A quick aside:" "Though everyone disregarded Aragon, I liked him." "So Aragon was giving a lecture on Petrarch." "He started with a great eulogy about Matisse..." "It took 45 minutes." "Finally a student shouted at him "To the subject!"" "And splendid Aragon pointed out, finishing the sentence cut short by the student, that the originality of Petrarch laid precisely in the art of digression." "For me it's the same:" "I don't digress, I enter a big subject." "Like a car off its normal road, forced to drive in the fields to reach the highway to Paris." "You should know it's a Truffaut and Godard movie." "Cinematography by Michel Latouche." "Produced by Roger Fleytoux for Braunberger." "As a tribute to Mack Sennett..." "There are two types of movie critique." "There's one which could be advertised as "good home cooking,"" "made for people who think cinema is not a religion, but merely an agreeable pastime." "Then there is this intelligentsia who write criticism in an exalted fury." "This intelligentsia believes they are in a state of war." "Whether they approve or condemn, they are always furious." "They judge films through the lens of the Cinémathèque." "So they are at war with bourgeois criticism." "Excuse me, sir." "Have you anything against youth?" "Sure do." "I prefer old people." "Both Truffaut and Godard educated themselves in cinema as critics." "Both wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma." "Godard started writing in January 1952, when he was 21." "Truffaut began in March 1953, when he was also 21." "They were quickly labelled "the Young Turks"." "With Rivette, Chabrol, and Rohmer." "The yellow cover, a still from a much-admired film, the long articles full of erudition and classic style, the reviews of new films written in a very literary style;" "this was the essential rendezvous for lovers of cinema." "This was Cahiers du Cinéma, founded in April 1951." "It's a cultural rebirth in France." "Film clubs, art films, magazines, newspapers, critics, premieres." "Cahiers du Cinéma was at the center of all of this activity." "It was directed by André Bazin and Jacques Doniol Valcroze." "A certain trend in French cinema It's from the arrival of those we called "the Young Turks"" "that the success came." "It is they who made it a polemical magazine which captivated readers." "It all began with the fact that the first great film critic had emerged." "Not that no one was important before, but there was a particular precision to André Bazin, which was to look for a pattern in the tapestry." "In other words, Bazin's critiques were not gut reactions, but were all linked, somewhere, to a pattern on the tapestry, which was the starting point from which he looked at things." "André Bazin who was the best film critic has also been like a father to me, at least my tutor." "And I would most likely not have worked in cinema without him." "André Bazin is editor-in-chief of Cahiers du Cinéma." "He writes articles in a beautiful, clear, and striking style." "He's rather tolerant." "This fragile left-wing Catholic is open to all sorts of tendencies." "He even accepts those who don't share his vision of cinema." "He quickly realizes that his magazine needs the energy, creativity, and knowledge of the young critics, of the Young Turks, headed by Truffaut and Godard, with Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol." "A group promoted by an elder unafraid to express his new and controversial ideas on the cinema, Eric Rohmer." "It's through Eric Rohmer's film club in the Latin Quarter and his magazine, the Gazette du Cinéma, that Truffaut and Godard first meet in 1949." "Sitting in the same rows, in the same cinema, reading the same articles, loving the same movies, they become brothers in the cult of cinema." "At the festival of the Film Maudit in Biarritz from the 11th to the 18th of September, 1950 one could spot these two young guys." "And there was this 1st photograph showing them together in front of the Biarritz high school." "That's where the film fanatics slept before going each day to watch films over and over again." "It's a bit like the original image of a friendship, the first scene in a novel of initiation, the first shot in a film on the complicities of a friendship." "François Truffaut comes from a modest background." "But in his life and in his family, reading and education have always been important." "Jean-Luc Godard was brought up on the shore of Lake Leman in Switzerland." "He was from a good family." "Nature, mountains, and sports were important." "In the midst of his siblings, he was raised in a rich, and cultured Protestant family." "On his father's side, he's a Godard." "His father was a doctor, who operated a clinic." "On his mother's side, he's a Monod, a Protestant family active in intellectual and industrial circles." "His grandfather, Julien Monod, was a friend of the poet Paul Valéry and founder of the Bank of Paris and the Netherlands." "Truffaut didn't have a happy youth." "Left to himself, he is not loved." "But his youth was saved by the cinema." ""My life was the screen", he said." "At 16, he founds a film club, and sees thousands of films." "Godard's a film fan too, but develops later." "He's at school longer, he is less self-taught." "He is a fashionable, well-bred young man, enamored of American cars, this one is his father's." "Truffaut's life is harder." "He steals to repay the debts of his film club." "He's sent to a correction facility, then prison." "He joins the army, then deserts." "So it's prison again." "Jean Genet gets to know him at that time and writes:" ""I hope you will keep that serious gaze of yours" ""and that simple melancholic way of expressing yourself."" "Literally, Truffaut is saved by cinema." "It is his salvation." "Love of cinema is more than a form of education." "It is for Truffaut and for Godard, who is leaving his family a school of life." "Hurry up, we'll miss the news!" "Love of cinema is the overwhelming passion of time." "The creation of a vision." "Shit!" "It's the wrong format!" " So what?" " I'm going to complain." " The projection room?" " Up there." "The aperture must be for 1.65 or 1.75 aspect ratio, as decided during the film's shooting." "The 1.85 format is a limit that should not be exceeded." "Young film fans are possessed by this passion." "They see life through it." "They are absorbed into the images." "They live via actors, directors." "It's as if their whole lives were on the screen." "In Agnès Varda's 1961 mock silent short film, a fill-in between two features." "Or in 1961, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina replay their meeting and wedding." "The movie equals reality." "All these young fans see themselves as film creatures." "We went to the movies often." "The screen would light up, and we'd feel a thrill." "For a film buff, life's purpose is to reunite in the kingdom of shadows." "You see the ghosts on the screen." "You are against academia, against adults, against seriousness." "There, in front of the screen, with the actors, that's where real life begins." "I used to sneak out to movies." "If my parents went to a play," "I had homework and then bed." "But as soon as they left, I snuck out to a movie." "With no intermission, films end before plays." "But I had to to get back and slip into bed before my parents returned." "It made me a nervous filmgoer." "So I often left before the end." ""When I saw the Young Turks invade the Cinémathèque," "I was very impressed by this rebel posse." "I didn't imagine they could have a sort of internal terrorism dictating what films to watch." "But, aesthetically, they sure stuck together."" "If the Cinémathèque had shown subtitled films or complete films, and not shown Murnau's Nosferatuwithout subtitles, as it was made, then it would have been a very nice show, a nice theater in Paris, but not a museum." "Some people see a Keaton film with Czech subtitles and grumble:" ""I don't understand a thing."" "If they don't get Keaton without subtitles, well..." "Because of the Czech subtitles, people developed what I call an education of the eye." "The eye has developed." "Its skills are sharper." "I think this intense contact with film is a learning process." "Lots of people say that the New Wave is inexperienced." "It is made up of people coming from all walks of life." "You find among its ranks assistants, scriptwriters, and people like me who had no experience aside from having watched thousands of films." "If we, movie people, want to be called artists, we must remember and respect this rule:" ""Any true moral standards imply a fierce resistance to tyranny."" "That's from a guy to whom modern cinema owes it all, Orson Welles." "These were the Young Turks of Cahiers du Cinéma." "André Bazin called them the Hitchcock-Hawks clan, because of their love for Hitchcock and Howard Hawks." "To learn directing, they choose models, references." "They learn to see, to direct, to create scenes, by choosing their mentors film masters." "François Truffaut, when he was 22, wrote letters to a few directors." ""I admire you, and I want to meet you." ""I want to write about you in Cahiers du Cinéma."" "Of those who received this note:" "Renoir, Buñuel, Ophüls," "Gance, Rossellini, Lang, Ray..." "Most of them answer, flattered by this single-minded love for them and their work." "The most important for Truffaut and Godard is Alfred Hitchcock." ""A few years ago," Truffaut writes," ""I was a journalist"." ""At the end of 1954, my friend Claude Chabrol and I went to interview you at the studio, on the set of 'To Catch a Thief'." "I'd like to do a book of interviews with you, prefaced by a text I would write which could be summarized by saying:" "If suddenly the cinema lost all sound and became silent again, many directors would be unemployed." "Not Alfred Hitchcock." "Everybody would know he's the world's best director."" "I'm Paul Javal." " Mr. Prokosch told you..." " I know." "It looks good." "I really like cinemascope." "It wasn't made for people." "It's only for snakes and funerals." "What's the matter, Miss Vanini?" "Is it about the script?" "He says it's not the same on screen as on paper." "Jerry!" "Your name is Fritz Lang, and mine is Godard." "You've made more films than I." " Do you know how many?" " No, I don't." " You know more..." " I know how many." "You know my films better than I do." "You've made 42 films." "My goodness!" "Far too many." "There's something that strikes me in a..." "If you allow me to call you..." " an older..." " What?" " An old film director." " A dinosaur." "What strikes me, in Abel Gance but also Renoir, speaking of ones I know, is your youth, you are always interested in emerging things." "As if they were taking place for the first time." "You're interested in new issues." "Do you think that..." "Listen, I think that our business, the art of cinema, is not only the art of our century, but also it's the art for young people." "You think it's the art of youth." "I believe it too." " We're ready, Mr. Lang." " Thank you." " Silence, let's roll!" " Silence, rolling." " Camera!" " Rolling!" "Rolling!" "Clapperboard!" "Scene 702, take one!" "Let's go." "Action!" "For Truffaut, Rossellini is a source of inspiration." "He had been his assistant." "He's seen here with the Ferrari of the Roman master." "They are friends." "Rossellini, with André Bazin, is François Truffaut's witness at his wedding, in October 1957." "Rossellini's strength is to completely ignore filmmaking as a technical issue, it just doesn't exist." "When he recounts a scenario, he describes impossible things." "He speaks about the British army entering Orleans." "One thinks:" "Lots of extras." "Then you see Joan of Arc and ten cardboard Soldiers entering a small model." "It's fantastic because, having to renounce things in order to film, it's this sum of renunciations that create a masterpiece." "As a filmmaker, for me, Roberto Rossellini taught me aesthetic things but above all, what he taught me..." "When I get discouraged, I think about Roberto." "Old, with many kids, plenty of dogs," "I mean a lot of mouths to feed." "And each time, he sets off in a radical direction, taking huge risks, which often lead to catastrophe." "But he moves in other direction, always fighting." "Welles is that way too..." "They influence me that way." "Renoir is by and large the only director who is practically infallible, who never makes mistakes." "And, if he never makes mistakes, it's because he finds in the end solutions of simplicity, human solutions." "I mean, he's a director who never bluffed, who never sought a style." "If you know his work, which is very complete because he covered many subjects," "I think that when you have a problem, if you're a young filmmaker, you can think of what Renoir would have done." "And you'll find the solution." "Truffaut and Godard remain faithful to Renoir all his life, a mentor for both of them." "In 1958, during a retrospective at the Cinémathèque," "Truffaut and Godard indulge another admiration, a profound influence on both:" "Ingmar Bergman." "When they see Summer with Monika, with Harriett Anderson, they suddenly understand how to film a woman, how to capture her desires, her body, her sensuality." "As in the images where Anderson wakes up, stretches, lies in the sun, gazes intensely into the camera." "These shots echo in the films of the two New Wave filmmakers." "In the final shots of The 400 Blows and Breathless." "What's "dégueulasse"?" "When he shoots Breathless with Seberg and Belmondo, and Raoul Coutard carrying the camera," "Jean-Luc Godard does more than copy his mentors." "He invents, on the job, a new film style." "That of Godard, Truffaut, and the New Wave." "This is their revolution." "They break from existing cinema, from good and bad, shooting new films in a new way." "In the street, among passers-by, in Paris life, with lighter equipment, without complex sound gear or lighting, following young, unknown actors, people their own age, telling stories close to them, intimate stories," "with a lively, more personal tone, capturing the movements of youth, and of life." "This creates a more authentic cinema." "But with a distinct personality, a black and white stylization, capturing a moment of history." "In "Scarface", when Paul Muni takes his machine gun, we have the feeling that, 5 minutos before or after, he could have done a different thing." "I like to convey this." "Convey it strongly enough to give the feeling that 5 minutes before, Seberg wouldn't have betrayed Belmondo." "She wouldn't have turned him in, or if she'd bumped into somebody, other things would've happened and we'd have a different film." "Like, if somebody gets run over in the street." "Had he crossed 5 minutes later, he'd be okay." "Our program -of course, I'm not sure we had one - but I had never thought that I was revolutionizing cinema or was unlike earlier filmmakers." "I always thought cinema was great, but lacked sincerity, and we ought to do it better." "Malraux said" ""A masterpiece is not a bad film improved,"" "but I thought good films were bad films improved." "There were taboos, rules." "The idea was that all that was no longer valid had value when people made them up, but now people copied them blindly..." "Carné, when he was shooting Port of Shadows, a great film because it fits its era, he was 29 years old then." "While "The Cheaters" is a bad film, because he copies, he uses formulas." "He's no longer creative." "So we went against this." "The New Wave wasn't at all..." "When people said of "The 400 Blows"" "that it was like "The Little Rebels", they were attacking the style, not the theme." "In other words, there's no real difference, for me, between "Goodbye Again" and "The Soft Skin"." "It's the same thing, the same film." "Simply in "The Soft Skin", the actors fit the characters." "Things felt right." "At least we tried to make them feel right." "The other one sounded false." "It was not suited to Bergman, Perkins, or Montand." "So it started from a lie." "So I don't think of a "new" cinema, but more real and believable cinema." "Franca, how are you?" " Fine and you?" " I'm fine." "Something came up." "I had to repeat the performance, so I had to stay over." "I'll be home tonight." " You're calling from Reims?" " Yes, Reims." "Don't bother." "I called Reims two nights ago, and was told you just left for Paris." "If I need a specific tone for a line," "I tell the actor: "When you speak, think this thought"." "In "The 400 Blows", the kid goes back to school" "He needs an excuse to have missed three days in a roll and decides to say his mother is dead." "We know he's going to say something huge but not what." "He could say the line 20 different ways." "It could be sly, it could be doleful, and so on." "So, I decided that he had to look like he'd given up saying it so the teacher had to force him." "So the teacher says, "Where's the note?"" "The kid says "It's my mother, sir."" "The teacher:" ""What about her?"" "And because the teacher insists, the kid -since he's being pushed - says "She's dead!"" "So I told the kid to think "It pisses you off, eh?"" "So you don't hear it but it gives him the expression, the tone, even the pose, the face, tilted up." "Let me see your note." " I don't have one." " You don't have one!" "You expect to get away with it like that?" "That's too easy." " It's my mother, sir." " What about her?" "She died!" "Oh, son..." "I'm sorry, I didn't know." "What I find great in his films, for me, when I work with him, is the feeling of freedom, of truth, that feeling you get along with the camera." "The precise intuition he has of the truth of tiny details." ""The 400 Blows", which I watch often, is full of details which give poetry to the movie." "For instance, when my father enters, I'm doing my homework," "he stares at my pen and says "What's that pen?"" "I say "well, I swapped it"." "He says "You make lots of swaps!"" "It makes a kid shiver when a father says that." "And that's pure intuition." "Is that a new pen?" "I made a swap for it." "You swap a lot lately!" ""The 400 Blows"" "had to stay close to childhood, like a documentary, with as little fiction as possible." "There were myths to be destroyed." "I remember the title of Truffaut's article, a year before his success at the Cannes Film Festival," ""French cinema dying under false myths."" "Therefore we had to kill those myths for cinema to be reborn." "That's good." "The more the better for me." "Camera!" "Pierre!" "Cut!" "You want another take?" "Before, there was one rule, one way of doing things, enforced." "People protected the rules like patents." "There was a freemasonry you had to join." "So I don't regret "Breathless"" "which allowed us to destroy all of that." "Making I, a Black Man, I shot a scene I loved, where Robinson speaks of the Indochina War." "I filmed from a car, doing a tracking shot." "Winding up the camera every 20 seconds, cutting the action." "Then, with the editor, we put together the shots, like that, one after the other." "It was all cuts, no dissolves." "I showed it to Oumarou Ganda and he improvised a speech." "I saw it run, I saw the blood running." "I saw it run, and I saw my friends dying right in front of me..." "I saw my friends hurt..." "It was so good, I couldn't cut a frame!" "Usually people would say "No way!" ""You can't jump-cut while tracking!"" "But it worked!" "Another old cliché of filmmaking destroyed." "Anyway, I've got a headache..." "We won't sleep together." "I just wanna be with you." "That's not it, Michel." " Why are you sad?" " Because I am." "It's silly." "Cinema, if you think about it, is what brings art close to to life." "Painting or sculpture is art, because it's clear things are not like this in life." "It's a transposition, and even if it imitates life, if it re-creates life..." "Life, it's the subway, the Galeries Lafayette, cars..." "Cinema brings both together, what we film is life and the camera is art." "Or the opposite..." "The shooting was very difficult." "Because I didn't know where work stopped and where private life began." "We were shooting in an apartment where I was living with Jean-Luc." "In the morning, before the crew came in, I'd make the bed quickly, because we'd shoot in the bedroom." "We had a mix of everything." "I remember, I had an argument once with Jean-Luc, and the next day... the scene was reenacted word for word, and I had to do it with Léaud." "I was in a state of intense paranoia, thinking," ""All the team must understand that we argued the day before."" "But it was all in my head." "I no longer love you." "You interfere." "You worry me." "Love is too difficult with you." "I hate how you discuss things you ignore." "I don't love you anymore." "I do this with my actors, I see them doing something and I say this is what you should do." "When you say "I love you,"" "you should lean on your elbows like this, and hold your cigarette like this, and your hair like this would be good." "For example, I looked at Macha Méril and said, we should try to put you like this." "No, it doesn't work, this might be better." "I felt the whole time like I was part of a hold-up." "It looked like an actual burglary." "We were shooting on a street corner, invisible, someone waved to me, I had to run somewhere." "In fact it does explain an important aspect of his films, it's that he infringes on reality." "I care less about cinema than a year ago simply because I made a film that pleased the audience, and that it will inspire me to make films again." "That's what it is, a dissenting mind." "Now people have a complete trust in me, so I hope I'll disappoint them, so they won't trust me anymore, as I like to work with people I have to fight against." ""The French" censors banned Godard's The Little Soldier for 3 years." "Between torture sessions, we had great political discussions." "They said I was an idiot with no ideals." "And like all organizations, they tried to indoctrinate me." "The French also tortured." "Prisoners awaited prison or results of their attempt to escape." "That is to say, a hail of bullets in the back." "Djamila's fiancé died that way." "There's no doubt that strength is superior to intelligence." "You have to be strong, it's true, to resist strength." "The New Wave encounters failure." "Its films become box office flops." "And people forget quickly the success of "The 400 Blows" and "Breathless"." "In September 1961," ""Godard's A Woman is a Woman" is a complete disaster." " Damn you." " Me?" "Not damn me." "But a dame me." "When Jacques Demy's magnificent "Lola" premieres in March 1961, only 30,000 people see it." " What time is it?" " What?" " What time is it?" " 7:30." "I must run." "I have a date at 8." " With Franky?" " No." "A guy I hadn't seen in 15 years!" "I happened to run into him." " A drink before you go?" " I don't have time." "I washed my hair." "It's all silky." "Bye." "Earlier, "Shoot the Piano Player" also flopped." "François Truffaut's second feature." "The myth is born of incompetent "cinéma d'auteur", carrying French cinema towards ruin and unemployment." " Fido?" " I think I made a mistake." "I'll take you back." " The police?" " Don't worry." "Self-defense." "The neighbours told the truth." "That the boss was trying to strangle you." "And you killed him..." "by accident." "What do you know?" " The car?" " It's here." "Come on!" "I must tell them." "Wait." "Coming back?" "Sure?" "You know it." "When I'll hate you, I'll put my cap on." "There's another, deeper explanation." "But nobody wants to see it." "Cinema is in crisis everywhere, in France and in the world." "Even in Hollywood." "This structural change, a shift of civilization, is a contemporary of the New Wave which only delayed the problems for a few months in France." "But when it's no longer new and attractive for the public, the crisis is there, threatening, harrowing." "The New Wave is the lamb to be sacrificed on the altar of crisis." "Charlie!" "Godard's The Carabineers in May 1963 is probably the most spectacular flop." "Barely 20,000 people bother to see it when it comes out in Paris." "When the great American capitalists left Hollywood a few years ago, someone needed to pay for the making of big productions for the masses, the one you incidentally find rudimentary, but that please the larger audiences around the world." "Since, unfortunately, this time coincided with the aesthetic claims of a bunch of young critics and authors, we missed the train heading to Italy." "Two movies on war didn't work, mine, "The Carabineers", and Jean Dewever's "The Honors of War"." "They were two sincere and very simple war movies that were complete failures." "But the other movies like "The Longest Day", were huge successes." "People love to watch people being slaughtered, women being tortured, old ladies being raped..." "That they love, but it has to be for the salvation of the homeland," "But our movies showed what war was really like..." "In the end, if the folly of war came from people's own folly... then they got suspicious, they didn't want to face it." "Brother!" "Brother!" "Brother!" "1... 2... 3..." "She's still moving." "Still." "Still?" "Still." "In these conditions," "Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut are among the rare filmmakers from the New Wave who are able to keep on working." "From "Jules and Jim" to "Stolen Kisses" for Truffaut." "From "Pierrot le Fou to Two" or "Three things" for Godard." "Each goes his own way, but when they can, when it's necessary, they help each other out, back each other, write and produce for each other." "This is a time of friendship and struggle." "Monsieur Jim!" "I have something to tell you." "Will you come with me?" "Jules, watch us!" "Jules would never again fear that she would cheat on him... or die, because it was done." "The bodies were found in the reeds." "Jim's coffin was bigger than life." "Catherine's was a jewel box." "They left nothing." "Jules had his daughter." "Had Catherine enjoyed the battle?" "No." "She'd dazed Jules to the point of nausea." "He felt a surge of relief." "Life may be sad, but it's still beautiful!" "I feel free." "We can do what we want!" "Look!" "Left... right..." "Look at the crazy little man!" "He's driving down a straight line and he has to follow it all the way!" "Yeah, just watch this!" "In 1966 Truffaut even produces" "Godard's new film, starring Marina Vlady." "He cares a lot for it:" "Two or Three things I know about her." "Truffaut writes a text full of admiration for Godard" ""Two or Three things I know about him,"" "expressing his sincere admiration." "Is it because Jean-Luc has been my friend for 20 years," "Or because Godard is the greatest filmmaker in the world, that I got involved in this film." "He is not the only director for whom filming is like breathing, but he's the one who breathes best." "He is rapid like Rossellini, witty like Sacha Guitry, musical like Orson Welles, simple like Marcel Pagnol, wounded like Nicholas Ray, effective like Hitchcock, profound like Bergman, and insolent like nobody else." "There's cinema before Godard and cinema after Godard." "Well we got here." " Where?" " Home." "So what now?" "We go to bed." "What's up with you?" " And then?" " We wake up." " And then?" " Same again." "We'll wake up." "We'll work." "We'll eat." "And then?" "I don't know." "Die?" "Other trials unite Truffaut and Godard." "In particular, censorship." "The most scandalous case is Jacques Rivette's The Nun, banned in April 1966." "The Nun was adapted from Diderot's novel, starring Anna Karina, Godard's wife in the title role." "Godard believes André Malraux is responsible for the Gaullist Government's repeated attacks on creative freedom." "Marie-Suzanne Simonin, Do you promise unto God chastity, poverty and obedience?" "No, my Lord." " Keep calm and listen." " My Lord, you ask me if I promise God chastity, poverty and obedience." "I heard you and my reply is no." "Gentlemen, above all, my parents..." "I take you to witness," "I'm here under duress." "Up to now I have pretended to obey, so that I could make a public protest." "I have no vocation." "I cannot obey my parents." "Dear parents, do what you like with me... except make me a nun." "No!" "No!" "That... which... guides... our... thinking... is... the..." "Marxism..." "Leninism..." "THE IMPERIALISTS ARE STILL ALIVE" "INFORMATION PROBLEMS:" "FOR DEMOCRATIC TV" "Comrades and friends." "Today is about news." "We know, we see them at the movies." "There's a false idea about news." "They say Lumière invented news." "He made documentaries." "But there was also Méliès, who made fiction." "He was a dreamer filming fantasies." "I think just the opposite." " Prove it." " Prove it." "Alright." "Two days ago I saw a film about Lumière by Langlois, the director of the Cinémathèque." "It proves Lumière was a painter." "He filmed the same things painters were painting at that time, men like Pissarro, Manet or Renoir." "When in February 1968" "Henri Langlois is dismissed from the Cinémathèque by André Malraux, the New Wave rallies and comes to Langlois'defense." "Truffaut and Godard are on the front line, battling for Langlois'reinstatement." "They mobilize filmmakers in France and abroad." "They sign petitions and protest." "They organize demonstrations against Malraux." "Together they shoot a short in defense of Langlois and the Cinémathèque." "Often, movies are run for 7 years, and then, they're shown in theaters like this one." "If their lifespan can be extended, it's thanks to Henri Langlois, whose cinematheque takes care to keep them." "And if you have chosen to see the film you're about to see tonight, or if you're used to seeing old movies you love, then you're obviously friends of the Cinémathèque." "So, sign on to support the French Cinémathèque." "In February and March 1968, in the midst of the campaign, several protests are organized for Langlois." "Godard cooks up this banner:" ""Gaullist Culture = Shit", with Labarthe." "Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud, and Nicholas Ray," "Godard the shadow man, Rivette, Chabrol," "Barbet Schroeder, Jean Eustache," "Resnais and Kast are the main supporters of Langlois facing the anti-riot squads which charged the demonstrators several times." "In the Langlois Affair, French cinema had its own May 68, three months early." "With Langlois back in his job and the battle won, it was natural that the filmmakers join May 1968 with students and strikers." "Cinema staged its own revolt, organized its own Estates General to change a system it had often fought against in the 60s." "The cinema demonstrates with at the forefront Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, Kast," "Doniol Valcroze and Rivette." "The images of May 68 seemed to be images from the New Wave." "Those who fought this fight did it imagining images from the films of Godard and Truffaut." "In Cannes, half way through May '68 a couple of filmmakers force the cancellation of the Festival." "Every hour, we learn factories are being occupied, closing down, trains are stopping, and soon subways and buses." "So, if we keep the Cannes Festival going, it's ludicrous." "Our comrade-students showed us the way by getting beaten up a week ago." "We have to demonstrate a week and a half late the solidarity of the cinema with students and workers in France." "Once again Truffaut and Godard are in the fight together," " inspiring, haranguing, leading." " I'm talking solidarity, and you talk trackings and close-ups." "But in the images of the Cannes Festival mutiny, it's clear the two mutineers are not on the same wavelength." "There's not one single film that shows worker or student issues as they really are." "Not one, not one by Forman, by me, by Polanski, by François, none." "We are behind." "Truffaut wants to stop the Festival, since it's absurd to go on." "I declare Cannes Film Festival closed." "Godard has already gone radical, a militant determined to transform his films, both in form and content." "Everyone around me." "Please!" "We're gonna shoot it once more." "After May 68, Godard and Truffaut will diverge." "They make opposite choices." "Two old friends making antagonistic choices, soon they will be enemies." "Godard changes his films, his life, his friends, for radical politics." "Truffaut continues his path, as if indifferent to politics." "In short, to simplify, let's say cinema opened my eyes to life and that life drove me away from my old style." "And opened my eyes to another cinema." "I really got sick of it." "Well before May '68." "I got tired of making art films." "I was going nowhere." "I was ready for May to hit me, and that's what happened." "Their lives diverge." "Truffaut sees himself as a craftsman - artist of classic cinema and express it in the film-manifest "Day for Night"." "Before starting, I hope to make a fine movie." "The problems begin and I aim lower." "I hope to finish the movie, period!" "Halfway through I say to myself:" "I could have worked harder, given more." "You can still make up for it." "And I start trying harder to bring the film to life." "Problems resolved." "Cinema is King!" "Godard flees the system, he isolates himself, exiles himself from classic cinema:" "Making political films in a political way." "Films that are tracts, essays, critiques of classic cinema and its words." "The exploiter never tells the exploited how he's being exploited." "Therefore, we, in what we tell, we, who represent information, cinema, television, the press, we, who are inside the discourse of the exploiter telling the exploited..." "Because cinema, novels, press, TV, are telling the story." "We who are inside, we must tell things differently, and in the end, tell different things." "A friendship ends." "Killed by a conflict over filmmakers and commitment." "In this fragment of a film-tract," "Godard denounces Truffaut as a bourgeois, a big shot of Hollywood on the Seine." "Truffaut fires back, condemning the political exploitation of art." "I'm not smart but I know this!" "Writing to settle old scores isn't art." "I've wondered about that." "That's what bothering me." ""In troubled periods," writes François Truffaut," ""the artist hesitates;" ""he is tempted to abandon his art" ""and to make his art subservient to an idea." ""Through film he becomes a propagandist." ""When this thought occurs to me, I think of Matisse." ""He lived through three wars untouched." ""He was too young for 1870," ""too old for the war of 1914," ""a patriarch in 1940." ""He died in 1954, between the wars in Indochina and Algeria" ""having completed his life's work, his fish, women, flowers," ""landscapes framed by windows." ""The wars were trivial events in his life." ""The thousands of canvases were the serious events." ""Art for Art's sake?" "No." ""Art for beauty, art for others, art that consoles."" "Godard spells it out:" ""When you cease to share ideas about movies, when you cease to love the same films, you fight and you separate." "The friendship dies." "This friendship, realized in cinema, it's nothing but a memory." "Nostalgic, melancholic, and sad memory of a period, that of the New Wave." "When friendship was everywhere." "It was a chain of brotherhood, strong and indivisible." "It made us all stronger and it seemed it would never break." "Here's Godard, paying homage to Jacques Demy's "Lola"." "In what film was it?" "There was a sailor and a little girl..." "He took her in his arms, and turned her around." "It was done very, very slowly." "Oh, yes, slow motion." "I don't know." "It was beautiful." "Here Godard pays homage to Truffaut, by filming Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim style." "How are you?" "How is Jules and Jim coming along?" "Moderato." "Or here" "Marie Dubois of "Shoot the Piano Player"." " You're okay?" " No, I wanted to see you." "What are you reading?" "Oh, yes, "Shoot the Piano Player"." "I saw the movie." "Aznavour is fabulous!" " Where are you going?" " Taking them back to their car." "Why did you ask me to come?" "Between the two filmmakers, Jean-Pierre Léaud is torn." "Godard and Truffaut fight over him as if over a child:" "The New Wave's child." "He embodies it with his special, intense, fragile presence." "But he is growing up." "Nourished by his different films." "Born Antoine Doinel with Truffaut, he breaks free of Doinel but returns to him often." "Truffaut understands this." "Becoming an adult." "He gives Léaud different roles in "Two English Girls" and "Day for night", then follows the development of Doinel in "Antoine and Colette, Stolen Kisses", and "Bed and Board"." "After "Jules and Jim", a producer asked me to make a short for a feature." "I didn't have many ideas so I thought "why not bring back Antoine Doinel and show his first amorous adventure, in the French Youth Orchestra?" "And then it was a few more years before "Stolen Kisses", a return to Doinel, and the end of "Stolen Kisses"" "was open enough to suggest a sequel which was "Bed and Board", hence a married Antoine Doinel." " Hey, they don't match!" " You're crazy." "One's bigger than the other." " It's not true." " It is true." " Then it's normal." " Not at all..." "If they had names, they'd be Laurel and Hardy..." " Idiot!" " But it's true." "Or Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, if you wish." "You're not funny, Antoine." "Doinel suits him like a glove, the role was written for him." "Some scenes exist simply because I know he will be very funny in them, or at least, I laugh already writing them." ""As Doinel's character exists "through different films over a decade," confides Léaud," ""I identified with him, and through him with François." ""But sometimes I rebel." "If I'm to exist, I have to reject Doinel, which means rejecting François." "That's what Godard did for me." "He let me escape the gilded cage of Antoine Doinel."" "You'll never find a personal solution." "There's none." "You have to fight." "In the struggle, you end up learning." "You accept too much." "You just can't." ""In Godard's films, what really impressed me is he knows exactly what he wants from his actors." "Down to single words." ""If the talk should be fast or slow." "Precise and pre-determined not what you'd expect." "So, working with him is exciting and challenging"." ""With Truffaut, and I've known him forever, the environment is not the same." "There's much less tension." "We understand each other."" "I have been offered a movie in Tokyo," "I want to accept." "Turgenev's "First Love", a good story." ""Between these two, I had a problem of identity." "For an actor, that's normal." "And I started very young and was very marked by Truffaut's Antoine Doinel"." "I don't know who he is, he is sort of a synthesis of Jean-Pierre and me." "I know he's someone who will make us laugh with his misadventures." "Do you like music, Antoine?" "Yes, sir." "Which allows us to say lightly things that are somewhat serious, or sad even, because we know it won't be maudlin." "You say I'm exceptional." "It's true, I'm exceptional." "Every woman is exceptional in turn." "You over there." "You are exceptional too." "He is courageous, in good faith, he is innocent, and na.i. Ve and has kept his youth." "You forget his real age." "Jean-Pierre Léaud is 27." "People think he's 18." "Don't you like any of them?" "I didn't know it was like this..." "It's very simple:" "You get hard and finish, then..." "Go on!" "Let's not confuse him with Antoine Doinel." "He's been in other films, like Godard'sMasculine Feminine." "He worked with Skolimowski and many others." "He must not be confused with Doinel." "Muriel, this is Claude." " Claude, this is Muriel." " Good evening." "For the first time, Jean-Pierre Léaud is not Antoine Doinel, i.e., not you." "Yes, it's an artificial role for him." "I have to say that the most difficult for him was to play a character born wealthy, at ease in life." "Jean-Pierre must act as if he were born comfortably, a sportsman, at ease with himself." "So it's a fabricated role." "Léaud would like to avoid the choice:" "Take turns, shoot with Truffaut, then with Godard." "But it gets harder." "He was sunk in despair." "Locked in darkness for days, he questioned his very identity." "Waiting for sleep, he'd repeat..." "I'm nothing, I understand nothing." "It's a bad time for him, torn between his two fathers." "You're a very good actor." "The job is very well done." "No one's private life runs smoothly." "That only happens in the movies." "No traffic jams, no dead periods." "Movies go along like trains in the night." "And people like you and me are only happy in our work." "I'm counting on you." "In mid-June 1973," "Godard storms out of a screening of "Day for Night"" "and writes to Truffaut." ""Probably nobody will call you a liar." "Well, I will." "It's not more of an insult than 'fascist'." "It's a critique." "And it's your lack of critique that I condemn." "You say films are trains in the night." "But who's aboard?" "What class?" "And who's the driver, spied on by the boss?" "And if it's not a Trans Europe, maybe it's the suburban train, or maybe the Dachau-Munich train, and we'll never see that station." "You are a liar."" "Godard also writes a very critical letter to Léaud for Truffaut to deliver." "Wait." "There'd be lots of people." "There'd be workers." "There'd be farmers." "Petit bourgeois and grand bourgeois." "Truffaut's reply is furious, a twenty-page-long letter, which ends forever their friendship, and creates a deep fracture in the history of French cinema." ""Here's your letter to Jean-Pierre." "I read it and I find it disgusting." "It's because of that letter the moment has come to say" "I think you're acting like a piece of shit."" ""You pretend to be a victim when you get by doing exactly what you want, when you want, the way you want, and preserving your image as uncompromising, even if it means attacking helpless people." "That's shitty behaviour." "That men are equal is only theory for you." "You don't feel it." "You just want to play a role, and it has to be a big role."" "Truffaut and Godard never meet again." "French Cinema, at least the New Wave, is shattered." "The face of the New Wave's child goes on aging:" "Part Indian mystic, part Last of the Mohicans, then once more young Doinel and the child he was, in May 1959, discovering Cannes with "The 400 Blows"." "A violent, touching kid, cheeky but timid, secretive and torn." "His voyage with two fathers of the New Wave," "François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, ends on a sad note." "The word "end" echoes "The 400 Blows", gazing into the camera, a boy discovering the ocean, turning towards us to bear witness." "But we will never know what's behind that gaze." " How old are you?" " I'm 14." "14?" "It's a bit old." "I'm not that tall." " You look 12?" " I think." "You said you needed a cheeky boy." " You're cheeky?" " Yes." "The stiff guy isn't me." " Where do you go to school?" " 200 km from Paris." "I took a train specially yesterday." "It's like a vacation." " Is it a boarding school?" " Yes." "I go out in the summer." "You're going to miss school?" "It doesn't matter as long as I'm happy." " Your mother is an actress." " Yes, yes." " What's her name?" " Jacqueline Pierreux." "You know Mr. Demarquis?" "No, my mother does." "We met him on the Champs Elysées." "My mother said..." ""A friend read in the paper... we saw an add for a part in a movie, a part for a kid." "And she said: "My son could do it." "Yes, send him on my behalf." And so, we sent a letter." " Is Mr. Demarquis nice?" " I only saw him 5 minutes, but yes." "On the road." " Are you sad or joyful in life?" " I'm joyful!" "Cut!" "Done by (c) dcd / July 2011"