The Films in My Life

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Summary: A marvelous realization of how Francois Truffaut views film.
Review: A film critic and director, Francois Truffaut, brings the reader into an almost literary expositon on films and how they affect us. He takes film beyond its bounds by noting the joys and sorrows directors have put into their creations. Truffaut, as a great director himself, discusses directors and actors like Hitchcock, Renoir, Bergman, Kazin, Welles, Wilder, and many others. What impressed me about the book was the compassion Truffaut has for film making. He brings out the nuances that I failed to notice in great films. For instance, in his discussion of Citizen Kane, he brings out the parallelism between Charles Foster Kane's mother and his love for Susan Alexander by saying Alexander was areplacemnent for his separated mother. And of course rosebud and the snow dome create the crux for such parallels to show uo. In his review for Kane, he brings out such nuances that only a well-carved critic and director could do. Those out there who enjoy film and all its! ! complexities will enjoy this book. A Frenchman discovers what made such films great in so many people's eyes: Rear Window, 8 1/2, The Seven Year Itch, and many other great films. I love Truffaut, so reading what he likes and dislikes was a sheer pleasure - sumptuous at times!

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Summary: Wonderful for film buffs
Review: I read this entire book on a flight from London back to the U.S. When I got home, I rented/watched several of the movies mentioned by Truffaut (Rear Window, etc.) watching for the points he made. Many people don't know Truffaut was a journalist as well as a filmmaker. He was able to write as desriptively as his films were imaginative. My only complaint is that this is a book for serious film fans who have already seen the movies he reviews. If you haven't seen the films, his comments aren't referential enough to include you. But, that said, it will help you see many titles in a new way.

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Summary: A movie buff's dream bedside-table, dip-into-it-for-fun book
Review: Originally published 1975. 358 pages including index, contents and short list of Truffaut's films.

I refuse to write this review after i've finished the entire book, because i refuse to admit that one day there could be no more of it to read. This is a film buff's dream book. Truffaut was a great filmmaker - his 400 Blows is one of the most beautifully told simple stories of adolescence ever. A sensitive, personal film. His film criticism, if possible, is better than his films. Truffaut had such a love for cinema, and this passion comes across in his writing more so than in his films.

This book is great to just dip into. It is a collection of essays, published and unpublished, expressing his opinion in a playful, fun, yet always intelligent way, of various individual films and entire careers. Included are pieces on the body of work of Chaplin, Welles, Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, John Ford, Fritz Lang, Frank Capra, Bunuel, Bergman, Fellini, Rossellini, plus many short subjects on individual films by many French new wave filmmakers (Resnais's Night and Fog and Muriel, Vadim's And God Created Woman, Godard's My Life to Live and All Boys... Patrick, as well as some Bresson, Guitry, Tati, Melville, Dassin, Becker, Clouzot and a few others) and American directors of talkies mainly from the 40's and 50's (including Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, Kubrick's Paths of Glory, Laughton's Night of the Hunter, Lumet's 12 Angry Men, Barefoot Contessa, Bounjour Tristesse and more).

Truffaut died in 1984, and this book was published in 1975 in english, but it doesn't talk about any movie after 1960 (i think), so bear that in mind - this is a chronicle of that period of cinema, which i wasn't that interested in when i bought the book, but it very quickly cultivated an interest in me. So even if you don't know much about movies before 1960, you'll find this book fascinating, and perhaps even inspiring.

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Summary: An Important Book
Review: This is a translation into English of Truffaut's earlier "Les Films de ma vie" to which was added a short chapter on Japanese cinema. The book has important things to say about a lot of important films, but also a lot to say about many unimportant ones, like "Land of the Pharoahs" by Howard Hawks, which is a good but not a great or even a significant film. All the same, there is much gold to be mined here.

Purchasers of this book should be warned that an error in preparing the plates for the current (possibly every) printing resulted in the absence of pages 64 and 65. A chapter on Fritz Lang, which should have begun on page 64, begins in mid course on page 66. But if you must have this book in English, there may be no other choice.

Readers should be warned also that Truffaut was a very partisan reviewer and something of an ideologist. This is the man who called David Lean an "incompetent cynic" (in this book, in fact) and who once opened an interview with "Cahiers du Cinema" by proclaiming that "Wyler is excrement!" (Wyler, c'est de la merde!). At the same time he fiercely defends the frequently mawkish or silly sound films of Charlie Chaplin. Such are the perquisites of genius. As he grew older, Truffaut became more generous toward other film makers and more balanced in his critiques. But Truffaut always has something insightful to say.

Readers who can read French should acquire "Le Cinema selon Francois Truffaut" (obtainable from amazon.fr), a collection of interviews about his own film work, carefully edited for continuous reading, which hasn't been translated yet into English. That is a better balanced book than "The Films of My Life," which give intimate insights into Truffaut as film maker and shows the magic than can be worked by a good editor. The recent biography, "Truffaut" ("Francois Truffaut" in the French original) by Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana, is a must-read. Read too Truffaut's correspondence in "Francois Truffaut" edited by Gilles Jacob and others. A wonderful documentary on Truffaut's life and work, "Francois Truffaut: Stolen Portraits" was directed by the latter and Michel Pascal (in French with English subtitles). Annette Insdorf has written "Francois Truffaut," a magnificent critical study of his films, with wonderful insights, and which has certainly changed watching his films for this writer. And, above all, see the films.