Quote:
The Truffaut coments cited in this linked note
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc53.2011/WaughVietnam/notes.html#1n sure make his sound like a major douche:
Quote:
“the pseudo-poetic career of Joris Ivens, sponger off of festivals, who ambles around from progressive palace to progressive palace, filming water puddles with municipal funds and much aestheticism. Next, upon these decorative images—thus rightwing images—his pal also devoted to the genre, Chris Marker, will try to veneer on it a leftwing commentary.”
Introducing that quote the author wrote:
Quote:
Truffaut’s response to Loin du Vietnam in Cahiers du cinéma (1967) was an ad hominem attack on Ivens who seemed to represent for him the vile combination of cinéma du papa and the Parti communiste, an attack which also baited Marker in the process:
What was actually said in an interview in the February 1967 issue of
Cahiers du CinemaQuote:
Rubric “Responsibility of the Auteur”
Cahiers: What do you think of the commercial fortunes of New Wave films?
Truffaut: There, things have been the most difficult because distribution is the hardest to modify. All the same, I believe that the Art House Cinemas are a little too lacking in their programming: the films exist, it is only to screen them, from “Adieu Philippine” to “La Cage de verre” and passing by “Le Signe du lion”, “L’Enclos”, “Le Coup de grâce”, “Le joli mai”, “La Longue marche”, “Muriel”, “Lola”, “Les Carabiniers”, the list is long...
For his part, the metteur-en-scene can no longer withdraw from the problems of production, he can not show himself to be unconcerned, or then he will be unconcerned and unemployed. Godard sets an example of someone who wants to work and who works unceasingly with difficult subjects, but he knows faultlessly how to keep things in proportion: he knows that up to 60 million francs he will not lose money for anyone. Claude Lelouch is like that, as also, is Claude Berri. If one does have a logical frame of mind, oh well, it becomes difficult to work.
Frankly, I feel that practical considerations do not lessen an artist and this seems to me sounder than to have, for example, the pseudo-poetic career of a Joris Ivens, becoming a leech at festivals, roaming from one progressive Palace to another progressive Palace while filming puddles with money from municipalities and with a lot of estheticism. Later, a committed friend of the genre Chris Marker will attempt to tack onto these decorative - and therefor right-wing - images, a left-wing commentary, while linking together shots which do not match even as the old poet sets off for places unknown in search of new subsidization. I am letting Ivens have it because he squandered all the profits of the young producer of René Allio’s “La vielle dame indigne” with a middle length film on the Wind (!) (40 minutes for 50 million francs) which will never be released.
Let's take care of one small point. The jumpcut author claims this is Truffaut's reaction to
Loin du Vietnam. The problem: This interview was published in February 1967. It was probably conducted in January 1967, if not earlier. Ivens did not go to North Vietnam until February 1967, the film was not shown in France until October 1967.
The author claims that the attack on Ivens was
ad hominem Truffaut makes plain why he is "letting Ivens have it". Ivens stiffed a producer (Claude Nedjar).
But the real disgrace of the jumpcut author is when he says, "an attack which also baited Marker in the process:" Truffaut and Marker had a long and close relationship going back to the 1940s. The notion of Truffaut baiting Marker is totally ridiculous. And to do this he misquotes Truffaut egregiously. He quotes Truffaut,
"Next, upon these decorative images—thus rightwing images—his pal also devoted to the genre, Chris Marker, will try to veneer on it a leftwing commentary."
He puts a period after the word "commentary", he doesn't put three periods to alert his reader that there is more said.
The whole sentence as I have translated it is:
"Later, a committed friend of the genre Chris Marker will attempt to tack onto these decorative - and therefor right-wing - images, a left-wing commentary, while linking together shots which do not match even as the old poet sets off for places unknown in search of new subsidization."
It's plain that Truffaut is commiserating with Marker who apparently on the film "Valparaiso" was left to make sense out of Ivens' hash.
Three years before when the French government was on the verge of censoring "Le joli mai". Truffaut wrote a letter to Alan Peyrefitte on Marker's behalf. In it, he said,
"With a degree of personal sympathy which find profoundly touching , our friend Chris Marker has allowed dozens of alienated, bewildered, anxious, impassioned and sometimes baffled men and women to speak their minds.
But we believe in a cinema of personal expression. And Chris Marker is, in our opinion, one of its most brilliant exponents."
pages 211-212 Correspondence 1945-1984 / François Truffaut ; edited by Gilles Jacob and Claude de Givray ; translated by Gilbert Adair ; foreword by Jean-Luc Godard. New York : Noonday Press, 1990