Fascinating documentary about the friendship and eventual separation between François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, the two leaders of the French Nouvelle Vague who stormily conquered the film world in the late 1950s and early 1960s. With beautiful archive material and well chosen film excerpts.
This documentary about the friendship and eventual estrangement between François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard starts with pictures of Truffaut's triumph in Cannes in 1959, where his direction of his feature debut Les quatre cents coups won him the Golden Palm. While Truffaut and his young protagonist (and alter ego) Jean-Pierre Léaud enjoy all the attention, Godard is sitting slightly frustrated in Paris in the editorial office of the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma writing reviews. One year later, it's his turn when À bout de souffle embarks on its triumphal journey. The Nouvelle Vague is born.
Nine years later, their friendship ends at the same festival in Cannes: Godard embarks on his committed phase and reproaches Truffaut for being apolitical. This results in a fierce quarrel, after which their ways part. The documentary includes beautiful archive material and well-chosen film excerpts.
PROGRAMMER NOTES
If you graduated on the oeuvre of Jean-Luc Godard, as I did, then it is very unusual to see a documentary that adds really relevant information to what was already known. If you view Godard in isolation, you do indeed miss what this film wants to make clear: the role of his art brother Truffaut. For a very long time he was supporter, sounding board and film conscience for Godard. Until Godard really started to identify with the French counter-culture in 1968 and suddenly he had had enough of Truffaut's 'bourgeois morality'. It was at about the same time that John Lennon and Paul McCartney started to drift apart - an interesting parallel especially if you bear in mind that they also have a two-year age difference and the younger accused the older the help of conservatism and betrayal In addition, the film shows again that the mentality and strategy of the Nouvelle Vague meant an unparalleled paragdigm break with the past, one that still has an effect today. In addition, the film is exemplary in its research. For instance just look at the sequence looking at the criminal as a model for the figure of Belmondo in À bout de souffle.
EH