749 The Soft Skin

[domino harvey]

I have always loved this particular Truffaut from first viewing in 1966 (as a teenager) during which two older Polish ladies in the cinema in Sydney chatted endlessly throughout the picture, continuously translating across French, Polish and English, and equally running a "moral" commentary on it. The supremely bourgeois subject of one time infidelity, plus the "cinematic" ankle of an apparently histrionic second and third act scene from Nelly Benadetti I guess encouraged them. As it must have many people, I suppose, in the later part of their lives, when a "simple infidelity" might, or might not explain so much.

I was profoundly moved by the movie, while also extremely annoyed by the fucking noise these crones made thruout the screening, with many "SHHHHHHHusses and PUHLEaze.......s" to counter but to no avail. But it stayed with me.

This was to be his "simply" "French" film after the first three knockouts, and while Chabrol, Rivette and Godard were obviously striking out with their own takes on filmmaking, Truffaut did this. And with it the achiningly beautiful Delerue score (his best IMO. Ironically like Herrmann's for Marnie in the same year!)

Err.. I dont want to say too much about this,. or Truffaut or the wars between him and Godard. He always had a connection with la tendresse, and I often wondered about how much more sublime Adele H might have been if Ophuls had taken the material. And then the rest of T's career. I really dont want to spend time right now getting into the seemingly continuous lowpoints of his later career (maybe not to some, of course). But unlike Chabrol, he took a different path. And like Chabrol he kept making movies, but not many as fine as this "small" masterpiece".

Not the least of it is the totally sublime Francoise Dorleac - she had only just made deBroca's fabbo That Man from Rio and was about to make Les Demes de Rochefort.

This is a sublimely wonderful Truffaut. (The MK2 print and Telecine is another story, but...)

I don't rate the film very highly, but that extended sequence in the middle of the film where he can't shake the guy is my favorite scene in any Truffaut film.

[ellipsis7]

I have it on VHS somewhere - must look out again - remember liking it...

Other point of interest is that it's really the first Truffaut film he made after he came majorly under the spell of Hitchcock, starting the interviews that would maje up the Hitch-book following JULES ET JIM... Influence is apparent in the probing caressing camerawork of LA PEAU DOUCE, and the more deliberate decoupage....

[GringoTex]

I often wondered about how much more sublime Adele H might have been if Ophuls had taken the material.

Ophuls did take this material and he made Letter from an Unknown Woman with it. Gal composes her heroic concept of love and bestows it on a worthless subject. I imagine this was a huge inspiration on Adele H.

Personally, I think Adele H. is probably Truffaut's masterpiece. It's singularly closed and obsessive, and we're begging for it to open up to history or landscape or something, and it never does, and we're all the better for it- like taking bitter medicine.

As for Mississippi Mermaid, the only time I saw it was when I was 19 or so, and it was the first Truffaut I saw after being swept away by his first three masterpieces, so I was obviously in no state to appreciate it. Thanks to your writeup, I want revisit it.

[domino harvey]

Announced for release March 17

[Minkin]

To start our conversation on this film, another supplement has been added:

-Monsieur Truffaut Meets Mr. Hitchcock, a 1999 documentary by film historian Robert Fischer

[hearthesilence]

Finally, this has been up on their Hulu channel for a while, at least since Film Forum ran a new print of this some years ago.

[warren oates]

I saw it there recently and liked it quite a bit more than I was expecting, enough so that it may be my second favorite Truffaut film after The 400 Blows. This is essentially an adultery procedural, about all the nitty-gritty details of getting it on with the mistress without letting it on to the wife. How all of it becomes way more complicated than it seems at first, takes more time and energy and ultimately turns into a real of job of work, a draining slog where he'd imagined there would just be carefree indulgence. This would make an excellent double feature with Rohmer's L'Amour l'après-midi.

[manicsounds]

blu-ray.com

[ordinaryperson]

DVDBeaver

[D50]

Blatant spoiler in the dvdbeaver link in the guise of the pink poster.

[FakeBonanza]

I just watched this for the first time, and I have a question about the disc.

During Pierre's dinner in Reims. When he is notified that there is a young lady there to see him, there is a reaction shot of a woman (at 56:15) that initially freezes on the first frame of the shot. There is clear damage on that particular frame, so I'm wondering if this is an issue with the print, or if it may be the disc itself. It is not an issue that has been mentioned in any of the reviews.

Did Chris or anyone else notice this upon viewing their copy?

[swo17]

I remember seeing something like that as well. I assumed it was a stylistic choice.

[FakeBonanza]

I remember seeing something like that as well. I assumed it was a stylistic choice.

I had considered that, because there is a similar instance when Lachenay is disembarking the plane back in Paris, when it freezes briefly on Pierre, then Nicole, before the scene resumes; however, that first use of the device is a clear stylistic decision, and the shot resumes smoothly after the second freeze-frame.

In the second instance at the party, the freeze frame occurs so much more rigidly that I had to wonder whether it was some kind of issue. The damage on that particular frame contributed to my concern as well. Even upon reviewing the two scenes back-to-back, I wasn't confident that the one at the dinner party was another example of the technique, I suppose because the first is so clearly stated, while the other seems more superfluous.

Nonetheless, I would think that you're correct. Thanks.

[martin]

I can confirm that the freeze frame is also present on earlier DVD editions of The Soft Skin (MK2, Cinema Club, Tartan), and it's a nice effect, actually. Well spotted.

I'm convinced it's deliberate. Truffaut sometimes used some very striking editing effects like when he used a jerky or stepwise push-in at the beginning of Fahrenheit 451. I'm speaking of the effect at 1:44 in this youtube clip (pretty bad quality, wrong AR, no sound, inaudible fan commentary). I guess Truffaut in this Fahrenheit scene is inspired by a scene from Hitchcock's The Birds (the corpse with its eyes pecked out).

[Roger Ryan]

It might also be worth pointing out that Truffaut used similar freeze-frame effects in his previous film JULES AND JIM as well.

[movielocke]

The Soft Skin is certainly a Hitchcockian tribute, particularly in the stylings of the score and the opening scenes, a "race" to the airport is given the full orchestral angst of Hitchcockian climax near the beginning of the film. But this is something of a bait and switch, as once Truffaut has cued you to expect a North by Northwest sort of plot to explode from the airport onward you instead have the intrigue-of-an-affair plot explode from the airport onward. The Hitchcockian stylings remain, but they felt subdued after that initial explosion of homage the film opens with.

One thing seems certain though, and that is that Sacha Guitry is as massive an influence on this film as Hitchcock is, and I think you could easily argue the film owes much, much more to Guitry's comic 30s subdued misogyny (which Truffaut deliberately explodes with his riff) than to Hitchcock's overt stylistics. In fact, I'd consider it somewhat essential to have watched at least Quadrille and Désire before seeing the Soft Skin, because Truffaut's film seems to be a fabulous amalgamation of Hitchcock by way of Guitry.

SpoilerShow

Given the nature of the ending, it's impossible to discuss the film without mentioning it. Just as you think this complete jerk is going to get away with it--indeed, prior to the final sequence with the wife and gun, the entirety of the film between the beginning family sequence and the final murder sequence is basically detailing the lengthy efforts to hide and maintain his affair--his wife appears and blows him away point blank with a shotgun, The End. This sudden turn of events, where he does get his comeuppance is so incredibly satisfying that it immediately made me reevaluate the film and consider it quite a bit better than I had before. Initially I loved it, then I started to dislike it, and then by the ending I loved it again, and the ending very effectively makes the entire journey to get there worth it--which makes a second viewing much more satisfying than the first.

[warren oates]

I think you're slightly misreading the film and, therefore, underrating it a bit, too, in spite of your praise. To me it seems very clearly the husband's story through and through. He's the POV character and one of the more Hitchcockian aspects of the narrative is how uninterested it is in judging the morality or ethics of his actions. It's all about the procedure of how he's doing what he's doing. And, in the end, it's there that he gets his actual comeuppance -- from the unsexy, draining logistics of the affair and all its deceptions. Which makes the ending all the more ironic, because he'd kind of learned a lesson in his own way that he hadn't even intended to and then

SpoilerShow

blam!