François Truffaut

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therewillbeblus
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Re: François Truffaut

#76 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:08 pm

I don't recall Kael's review specifically but I believe she claimed Léaud was miscast, which entirely misses the point. He's so good at playing characters who appear at ease but with nescient passivity, a lack of self-consciousness that feels like a coping mechanism for a deficit in accessing his deeper self. Léaud is the perfect actor for this character who is unknowable to himself and to us, putting up walls of bland chivalry to hide any real identity. His vapid nature also helps us understand how Muriel's attraction is sourced in a fantasy rather than a love for his deeper self, or at least in a place that is clouded by other self-motivated desires. This is a film about three lonely people unable to express themselves, only partially because of social norms, but mostly because they don't have the skills to locate what they want to express.

My experience watching it five+ years ago was equally compelling, but more focused on an optimistic presentation of love's internal logic escaping these characters. I remember finding comfort in the perspective that we never know when mutual love will build in two people and how great it is that this can occur, and change, and we can discover new love in other places we were blind to before, an onion with infinite layers of opportunities to peel back. I still feel this way, but now as a man in my 30s, with a few more failed relationships under my belt and the same poisonous defective characteristics contributing to those failures, despite attending to continuous therapeutic work across multiple domains in an effort to change, yet still maintaining delusory ideals of what I think I want and can do in contrast to what transpires in reality, the tragic elements stood out to me this time. I believe in both lenses of approach, but felt far more compassion for the third wheel, the one who is doing all of the 'feeling', and how sad it is that this feeling dissipates when that person finally obtains the union they've sought for so long.

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domino harvey
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Re: François Truffaut

#77 Post by domino harvey » Wed Nov 03, 2021 3:08 pm

As an addendum to my completion of Truffaut's directorial filmography, I recently watched Mata Hari agent H.21 (Jean-Louis Richard 1964), which was conceived and co-written by Truffaut but passed off to his sometime collaborator Richard, presumably because Truffaut was nervous about directing another "non-serious" work after Tirez sur le pianiste bombed. The film is a transparent throwback to Hollywood war romance melodramas of decades prior, something which is blatantly obvious to everyone but Letterboxd members with no concept of film history. As a mainstream entertainment, it's very amusing-- and more entertaining, I'd say, than Truffaut and Richard's other film this year which Truffaut did direct. Not an amazing movie, but given the kinds of films Truffaut would race to direct in the coming years, an insightful peek at what he prioritized in his early years.

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knives
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Re: François Truffaut

#78 Post by knives » Wed Nov 03, 2021 3:41 pm

That does sound fun and at least the top letterboxd review seems to get it.

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Rayon Vert
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Re: François Truffaut

#79 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Feb 25, 2023 5:52 pm

tenia wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 2:32 pm
To be exact, the Arte Truffaut set has specs with duration calculated at 25 fps. There's no certainty yet it's because it'll really be 1080i50.
The specs however mention HD, 2k and 4k, and I'd suppose everything stating HD will be older pre existing masters.
I opened the box. These are the specs according to the backcover for each disc:
HD 1920 X 1080: La Mariée, La Sirène, Une Belle Fille, Adèle H
HD 2K: L'Enfant sauvage, L'Argent de poche, L'Homme qui aimait les femmes
HD 4K: La Chambre verte

I'm not a technical buff, so if anyone knows if the Kino and Radiance disc offer better, please let me know.

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tenia
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Re: François Truffaut

#80 Post by tenia » Sat Feb 25, 2023 6:33 pm

DVD Classik tested the French Arte set then : https://www.dvdclassik.com/test/blu-ray ... r-d-images

Only La chambre verte is in 1080p, but otherwise, it's indeed what you report in terms of sources.

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Rayon Vert
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Re: François Truffaut

#81 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Feb 25, 2023 7:40 pm

Thanks for delivering the hard but necessary news tenia. I'm guess I'm getting the Kinos.

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