François Truffaut regarding the director profession

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Francois Truffaut.

François Truffaut

When cinema was invented, young people were interested in it. It's a fact that Abel Ganz, Griffith and all those people started at age eighteen, twenty, twenty-two. Cecil B. De Mille was a really young man, while shooting in California. And afterwards, probably due to sound starting to play a part, the films became too expensive and they decided that they couldn't invest so much money, with all the aeroplane noises it was necessary to avoid to make sound films, it wasn't possible to invest so much money in people under forty-five. And I believe that that's how cinema became too solemn. So what made us basically the only thing common to all our articles and our cinema campaigns, was to say it was necessary to be able to make a film at age twenty just as Radiguet was able to make " Devil in the Flesh" at age sixteen. And because I definitely believe that very important things must be done at a young age, and that it's a real shame. I am thinking of a filmmaker like Resnais for example, who did some wonderful stuff. But I regret that he didn't start earlier. I'm sure that before starting with something as brilliant as Hiroshima, he would have made some perhaps less perfect but tremendously passionate feature-length films if he had started making films at the age of twenty. So I believe that it's a truly precious age. And it's a shame to be an assistant for too long, to have needed to earn a living for too long, and so to end up a bit blasé. I am not saying that what you do after thirty-five is of no interest, but what you do before is priceless. So in a film like "Breathless", there is the strength of a first film, there is also the strength of someone young. "Breathless" couldn't have been made by someone at the age forty, it's not possible. I find that the first three films are the most interesting. From the fourth one on, it's not that they're no longer interesting, it's that it's your career, it's your job, so if you're... Certainly, of course Renoir was also interesting in his fourth, and fifth, but the really essential ones are the first three. That applies to Vigo who died after his second film, and I regret he didn't make the third which would be the synthesis of his autobiography "Zero for conduct" and of the great aesthetic film which generally comes afterwards, which was "Atalante". I like films by older directors very much, I believe that... but they are not nearly as interesting as films be young people, because they're a bit less professional, they are a bit less professional. They have a fresh interest which is that...the interest of first films, is that they are less trivial and that's also the interest of final films, where you seem to tell stories, and which are generally like a sort of tall story which is the interest of Lunch on the grass, "The Elusive Corporal".

François Truffaut

"The Elusive Corporal" is a very strange film and much more mysterious than Grand Illusion. It's an amazing film. I watch it from time to time, I find it a fantastic film. Richer than "Grand Illusion", more mysterious.

François Truffaut

It has different qualities to a film made by a young person, it's the film of an old man. But certainly whatever is made in between these two, is controlled, it's your job, you make films. I know, I got into cinema by escapism, so I can't be against escapist cinema for example when it's said that escapist cinema is finished, you'll never again spend a couple of hours at the cinema. That's been it my whole life, I went to forget my worries. If I have fewer worries now, I still expect a film to really immerse itself in the subject. Well, I can't talk about development, I just can't. I am probably attached to certain cinema characters. If you want, I even regret, you see, when I make a film for example I regret having to give interviews, I speak only of what is being done at that time. But I am a great fan of anonymity. I would be very happy for my films to be released in cinemas next to stations. I love the cinemas which are next to stations, Saint-Lazare cinema, cinemas like that. Where people go before taking a train without really knowing what the film is, without even looking at the title. I love these cinemas, where there are fifteen photos and then you go in or don't go in. But the idea is for example when someone says to me that cinema is fantastic, they are going to see a film by such and such a person, but frankly I'm not happy, I know that for one of my films to work, they need to speak about it as one of my films, such as "Jules and Jim", but in reality, I would no longer be happy to be successful when I make a more anonymous film, let's say "The Soft Skin" still that's not a very anonymous film, or "Shoot the piano player". An adventure film really where I would have liked not to have to participate in the launch, so as for names not to be mentioned, and really for me... It's not nostalgia, it's that I believe this permanent side was one of cinema's strengths. You go in, you come out again in the same place, but you have been immersed in something for hours. If when I shoot a similar thing happens in my head as in Renoir's head when he made "Toni", I am happy. That is, I don't believe in change, I don't much believe in things changing. I believe there are people who have always worked in this spirit. It's when you read the book on Vigo by Sales Gomes you see the light, suddenly, he's in front of the railings of Austerlitz station. He uses the railings, I'll use railings for example, and he makes up the story of this chap who steals the bag. Another time there was a bit of snow on the ground, so he puts up a sign, I don't know what for, maybe to do with the unemployment and the closed factory, and he makes a queue in front of this place to look for work, It was... he improvised all this too even in those days, I don't believe that much has changed, it's a search for the truth so it's a search which must be done while you're writing the script, and then which is done also while shooting, and again while producing, you find that finally, something that was planned to go at the beginning, is better if it goes at the end, so you put it at the end.

François Truffaut

I believe that it's more to do similarities if you like, there are people who are alike, I believe that's rather how it works only for each generation.

François Truffaut

I would never say that the script is not important, no, the story is two things, it is the alignment of the story, the spirit and whatever the interest is, at least I believe it is. And so, there's a way of classifying, there's a class of film, there are the scenes, there are the little clips, and perhaps by putting the clips in a different order, it's better, when I watch a film I can't stop myself from saying to myself "hold on, it would've been better if this scene had been before that one", no, no. I never say that, it all interests me really. For example, I don't... as a spectator, as a spectator I wasn't able to watch films set in jungles, I wasn't able to watch historic films, But now, if Orson Welles made "Falstaff", of course, I prefer "Arcadia", an investigation into today's world capitals, But even so, I'd watch "Falstaff" because it's him There's no longer... I will never say these people don't interest me, or this theme doesn't interest me, I would never say that to a director because it's insulting. You have to be interested, you have to... from the moment that he's interested in it, you have to be interested in it and the reviews that you have to do of him are about something else, about the coherence of his work, or it's logic but never... I don't believe that you have the right to say "Sir, your peasants don't interest me or your students don't interest me or your soldiers don't interest me". No, you have to be interested in everything. It's just in this way that "Gertrud" was condemned by people saying it's an old story of people from times gone by, an old conflict which is no longer of any interest to anyone. That's it, That's why this film was attacked. So it's certainly unjust, isn't it? No, I don't see it like that, no Delannoy's material is good enough for me, Rene Clement's material as well, I don't believe in judging material. And well the treatment, that's the criteria, that's the talent, the sincerity, I don't know what, coherence definitely, I'm a great believer in logic, good films are logical and bad ones are illogical. I believe that that's just about true.

François Truffaut

You can design these films like Hitchcock and Eisenstein, you can make them up, I find that a critic in any case mustn't have a preference for such and such a type of subject. Truly I have always thought that, it should be, I'm thinking for example of someone like Benayoun, it is clear that he can't understand a good realist film because he doesn't like realism. So for me he's a specialist critic, he's as specialised as if he were an animation critic. There are these animation people Lamartin, Bochet, Barbin, from the moment that... they speak about "Direct shot cinema", as I like to call it when there are actors, with contempt. Because for them, it is only interesting when the actors are designed, that is when things are animated.

François Truffaut

So in the end, critics normally, it's almost only for them to judge the script. Since...at least there, it's one material, but the script is only one aspect of the film, of course, it's the literary material of the film. They say: that literary material pleases me, it's original, and the characters go in unexpected directions, or else they go in conventional directions and everything is conventional. But if not then the filming is the secret, then it is very difficult, how do you judge secret things like that, it's difficult.

François Truffaut

Renoir said, that cinema is more mysterious than painting you know. Cinema is made for the five thousand people that you pass by, but when you pass by, there are only three people who understand something. He declared that cinema was more secretive than painting, that's probably true because of this whole mixture of elements which go into it. And even then, you can't say that filmmakers are better judges than critics because you can't find three filmmakers in the world who agree on a film list. By accepting that they come to an agreement.

François Truffaut

And I know that when I attack a film and someone tells me that they've been moved by it, I stop attacking it because that's one of the criteria that I like. I remember a film by David Lean which is set in Venice with Audrey Hepburn, I'd attacked this film, which was called "Summertime" a lot, I believe... And then people said "Ah no, it made me cry", very well then! So listen, I'd just forgotten. I forgot Rossano Brasi, the little Italian beggar with his bouquet of flowers, all that romance that there was. I said to myself, no, that really was touching, and touching in an interesting way. So that I find that to be the best thing for disarming. Yes, emotion is a good criterion, but even so emotion is also linked to culture. Depending on your culture, you are moved by more or less refined things, more or less abstract.

François Truffaut

I'm not totally sincere, I quite like hypocrisy, I very much like a mixture, I love the combination of sincerity and hypocrisy, I don't know why I like hypocrisy, I love hypocritical people. Hypocrisy, is tact. For example, I know some sincere people who are unbearable.

François Truffaut

Someone whom I never speak to, such as Simone Signoret, I let her speak, but I will never say anything to her, because she is a sincere woman. And her sincerity is sort of boorish. I prefer someone who tactfully.. I even prefer to feel that someone has reservations about you, who does not like you but who does not tell you. Therefore, this criterion of absolute sincerity, is not one of my criteria. I like people, I place tact above everything else, and someone who has tact, that is, someone who doesn't say what he thinks at the time when he thinks he must say it, that for me is of greater value than someone who always says what he thinks for example. I believe that there are times when you don't have to say what you think and people to whom you don't have to say what you think. And thoughts that you must hide.