400 Screens, 400 Blows - 'Wild' Man Truffaut
Filed under: Classics, Foreign Language, Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.
A small distributor called The Film Desk has one film in release on just a couple of U.S. movie screens. It has received very little notice from anywhere in the press or the blogosphere. It's an older film, from 1970. It's considered to be something of a classic, but it's not really one of the essential classics, nor is it one of those "unsung" or "forgotten" classics. It's currently available on DVD, so no big gaps have been filled in. I'm not even sure to what extent, if at all, the new print has been restored. But, due to lack of a press screening, I went to see it last Friday with an audience, and it made my week.
The film is Francois Truffaut's The Wild Child. I think it's a masterpiece, and one of Truffaut's most essential, revealing works. It's shot in true black-and-white, and it has a spare, stripped-down feel. It's based on a true story, but it doesn't exploit this for sentiment or prestige; the lead character never once cracks a smile or sheds a tear, and the music score hides softly in the background while the raw, natural sounds of the live shoot permeate the soundtrack. It was docudrama before that term was co-opted by melodrama. In the story, which takes place in 1798, a boy of about ten is found living alone in the woods. He can't speak, can't walk upright and appears to be deaf. When he first emerges, he's treated as a freak by the media and by Paris's curious citizens. Truffaut plays Doctor Itard, who believes that the boy -- whom he names "Victor" -- can be educated. He takes him to his home, and with the help of maid Madame Guerin (Françoise Seigner), they begin lessons.
There's no romantic subplot, no explanation as to how the boy got there. It's cold, hard and clinical, but undeniably affecting. It does my heart good to see the film out there again today; even if only a few hundred people actually see it on the big screen, it's a good lesson in storytelling, proving how many of today's films throw in too much explanation, foreshadowing and hand-holding, as if audiences were just getting dumber and dumber. But what makes The Wild Child a masterpiece is the presence of Truffaut the artist. I got to thinking: what would draw Truffaut to material like this, especially when he was such a romantic who loved telling tales of beautiful women and poetic, suffering men?
Here's the thing: Truffaut loved movies and making movies more than just about anything. I think he saw in The Wild Child the relationship between a director and his actor. Itard does some cruel things to test Victor and get him to learn, and certainly Truffaut understood that cruelty -- i.e. pushing actors through difficult emotions -- was part of making great films. Hence, Truffaut isn't so much teaching Victor as he is shaping the young man to his vision. And, oddly, the young actor in the role Jean-Pierre Cargol responds with a frighteningly good performance filled with grunts and eye-rolls and animal-like movements. There's a scene in which, during a test of rebellion, Victor bites his teacher, and the teacher is pleased with the bite. That's the key to the film, and a reminder that more films need sharper teeth.
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