Fascinating documentary about the relationship of the two biggest stars of the French New Wave – Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard. Both film critics turned directors, they were friends who helped each other at various stages of their career – actually, it seems Truffaut helped Godard more than the other way around, providing a story and guarantee for Breathless, discovering Jean-Pierre Leaud who Godard used in several films, providing constant public support. Godard repaid this by becoming more militant, angry and eventually slagging Truffaut off so much that Truffaut cut off contact.
That mightn’t have been how it happened but I believed it from the footage here – Godard was a doctor’s son and banker’s grandson, well off and sulky, given to radicalism and Marxism, seemingly humorless (he reminded me of Che Guevera) while Truffaut was a genuine working class battler, a humanist. Spoilt middle class brats always became the most hard core militants.
Some of the footage is terrific – interviews from the 60s, press conference from the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, Leaud’s audition tape for The 400 Blows. A little more context wouldn’t have gone astray – and I didn’t get that chick flicking through the old newspaper cuttings. I’m surprise Truffaut and Goddard battled so much over Leaud – he wasn’t that good an actor, at least not as an adult, but then I guess it was more symbolism than anything else.
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