TMI (Today’s Movie Info)
February: Director’s Month
FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT (1932-1984) dropped out of high school in France to “self-educate”. His curriculum included watching 3 movies each day and reading 3 books each week. While still a teenager, he formed a movie club and became a film critic. At the Cannes Film Festival in 1959, he was presented as Best Director for The 400 Blows (1959). It was quite an honor for a French director, especially for his first feature film. He also received his first Oscar nomination for his work on the Screenplay. The 400 Blows ushered in the French New Wave in cinema, which brought a wider audience to other French directors like Jean Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol. Truffaut’s third film, Jules and Jim (1962), received critical acclaim and remains a classic today. In 1966, he wrote the screenplay (based on one of his favorite books) and directed his first English speaking film, Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 (1966). His 1973 film, Day for Night, brought Oscar nominations for Directing and Screenplay, and it won for Best Foreign Film. Truffaut also acted in a few films, including playing a scientist in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). His final film, Confidentially Yours (1983) was a tribute to his film idol, Alfred Hitchcock. Truffaut was such a cinephile and lover of films that legend has it, he once kicked a hitch-hiker out of the car when he realized the man knew nothing of movies. His troubles in the real world are clear from his famous quote: “I have always preferred the reflect of life to life itself.”
Movie Reviews from the Dark 