Advertising Truffaut in the States: The Bride Wore Black (1968)

Running Wild: François Truffaut's Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972)

Shot in 1972 just after his epic masterpiece Two English Girls, Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me is admittedly minor Truffaut but it has its charms such as its star, the always-incredible Bernadette Lafont, one of the New Wave’s most valuable and iconic players.



More than anything else, Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me is meant as a tribute to Lafont’s incredible comedic skills and natural charms. Truffaut obviously wasn’t attempting any grand masterful work here and the when the film succeeds it is mostly due to Lafont’s energy which is never less than infectious.



Truffaut needed a bit of a break after the draining Two English Girls, and Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me worked towards his desire to “make a gay film” after finishing “a sad one.” Describing Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me during filming as, “a mixed salad between Shoot The Piano Player and The Bride Wore Black with a sprinkling of The Mischief Makers.” Truffaut seemed to realize that the film would be a bit of a transitional work for him and that’s exactly what it is.



Based on a an American novel which Truffaut said had him, “howling with laughter at every page” the famed director never had anyone else in mind for the film’s lead character other than Lafont, and he admitted that he immediately saw her, “superimposed over the deeds and gestures of the heroine in the novel.” After securing the rights to the film from Columbia, Truffaut recalled that he “still needed to convince Lafont”, and that, “it took no more than making her listen over the phone to my riffling the pages of the book.” to do it.





After recruiting writer Jean-Loup Dabadie to help him with the script, Truffaut found the making of Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me to be a pleasurable one, mostly due to his great working relationship with Lafont. Truffaut also enjoyed the idea of making a comedy where he could, “film a story whose characters are all crazy.” He would also note that it would be, “his least sentimental film” and that more than anything else he wanted to, “get back to the best moments of Shoot The Piano Player.” While the film never reaches those heights there is much to savor in the lovely photography of award winning Pierre-William Glenn and the vibrant supporting cast including Claude Brasseur, Charles Denner, Daniele Girard and frequent Jean Rollin player Michel Delehaye.





Despite having Truffaut, Lefont and composer Georges Delerue attached to it, Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me failed with the public and critics when it was released in 1972 and it has become one of the least regarded films in Truffaut’s impressive canon. Truffaut continued to value it though and three years after its release as The Story of Adele H. was stunning audiences and critics, the director would call Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me, “the most controlled, coherent, and complementary” film he had ever made.
Time has begun to be kind to the film as well. Robert Ingram had much praise for the film in his 2004 Taschen guide to Truffaut and would write that Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me is, "richly comic on several levels", and that, "the dialogue is frequently very funny...and the pace is literally breathtaking." Compare this enthusiasm to Don Allen's take on the film in his 1985 study on Truffaut where he stated it was like, "the disconnected ramblings of the analyst's couch", and that it was, "tenuous and self-indulgent". Perhaps Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me just needed a little time for viewers to recognize the pleasures which are there.





More than anything else, Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me is a frenetic and slightly crazed tribute to Bernadette Lafont, whose mere presence makes the film a success. Annette Insdorf in her book on Truffaut called Lafont’s character in the film, “one of his most liberated heroines, vulgar and vital, a gambler with life and death.” A minor work by a major director perhaps, but as a celebratory teaming of two of the New Waves most memorable figures, Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me more than deserves an American DVD release.

Advertising Truffaut in the States: The Wild Child (1970)

Truffaut's Greatest Muses: Bernadette Lafont

Operation Screenshot (Films of the Fifties) François Truffaut's Les Mistons (1957)

"How can you make excuses for a 'first film' and above all how can you get by without excusing yourself? Still and all, if- thanks to the images of Jean Malige, the words of Maurice Pons, the music of Maurice Le Roux, the presence of Gerard Blain, Bernadette Lafont and five kids from Nimes-my 'stammered' truth becomes a little 'your' truth, then I'll repeat the offense soon and without too much embarrassment."
-François Truffaut, November, 1957-

My Lonely Sad Eyes: The Story of Adele H. (1975)

Perhaps more than any other film ever made, Francois Truffaut’s 1975 feature L'Histoire d'Adèle H. (The Story of Adele H.) is the story of a face. That unforgettable face in question, the face that Truffaut’s camera seems positively bewitched by, is that of then nineteen year old Isabelle Adjani. Truffaut films Adjani peaking through windows, glancing into mirrors, staring into the camera…he even films her distorted reflection in the few moments she is not directly on screen. He films her face obsessively, like he’s stumbled upon the answer to a very complicated ancient riddle no one else could ever solve. Truffaut famously exclaimed upon the release of The Story of Adele H. that he personally didn’t, “know Isabelle Adjani”, but his camera knew her more intimately than perhaps any director had ever ‘known’ an actress before or since.

Truffaut discovered Adjani in the early seventies when he saw her in an early television appearance. He recalled that, “she is the only actress who made me cry in front of a television screen” and he knew immediately that he had to film her in an effort to, “steal precious things from her.” The prized role of Victor Hugo’s doomed daughter Adele was an inspired one for Adjani and it finally allowed Truffaut to get the film off the ground, something he had been attempting to do since the late sixties. The film the two of them would embark on would turn out to be an emotionally draining one but it proved to be a powerhouse production fueled by a director at his peak and an actress who at nineteen was already better than any of her peers.



In her original review of Truffaut’s work based on the story of Adele Hugo’s obsessive love for a young soldier who has no regard for her, Pauline Kael wrote that Truffaut had created, “the only great film from Europe (she had seen) since Last Tango in Paris.” It was typical Kael hyperbole but her enthusiasm was warranted, as The Story of Adele H. is one of the great films of the period. It’s a mesmerizing work that is as beautifully written and directed as it is acted. Kael would go onto write in her review that, “no one before Truffaut has ever treated a woman’s crippling romantic fixation with such understanding, black humor and fullness.” For an artist who admitted a lifelong certain mystification at women in general, The Story of Adele H. was a major achievement for Truffaut, who had never found an actress who possessed the sort of ‘magic’ he had always spoke of like Adjani.


The Story of Adele H. followed one of Truffaut’s greatest successes in America, the astonishing Day For Night and in many ways it has that earlier film that has always overshadowed just how truly wonderful Truffaut’s historic epic is. Day for Night was a hard act to follow but with The Story of Adele H., Truffaut created a film that was its equal, if not in scope then in depth, and it deserves just as much acclaim and praise.

The Story of Adele H. was not a huge success for Truffaut upon its release financially or critically for the most part, although it eventually was granted a best-film award from the French Syndicate of Film Critics. Author Don Allen wrote in Finally Truffaut that part of the problem at the heart of The Story of Adele H. for a lot of viewers was that Truffaut, “was so obsessed with the performance of Adjani”, that he ignores everyone else. Allen has a point but this was a deliberate decision on Truffaut’s part. He addressed it in his valuable forward to the published script for Adele by writing, “I felt it would be a fascinating challenge to concentrate on a single character, obsessed by a one-way passion.”

Adjani was justifiably lavished with praise and won several prizes for her performance and was even nominated for an Oscar, which she lost. Truffaut’s heroic effort on the film was mostly ignored, save for winning Best Screenplay from the New York Film Critics. While the film was not one of Truffaut’s more successful works, it would immediately establish Isabelle Adjani as the most intense and gifted actress of her generation, an artist truly possessed by genius. Truffaut never worked with her again as the experience of filming her had been too overwhelming. He admitted to Jean-Loup Dabadie, in a letter written during the editing of the film, that he couldn’t imagine filming it again and that he feared Adjani had succeeded so well as the older Adele H. that, “she would have to reverse the process for her next roles”, so her real age could catch up to Adele. Ironically, Truffaut also wrote to Dabadie that Adjani needed, “other styles of direction” going forward and he just wasn’t, “the man for the job”…