[Archives from 10/97-3/11]François Truffaut’s The Woman Next Door is a somber, subtly disturbing film about the beauty and destructive toll of passion. It is a tragic story chronicled through the dispassionate, reverent gaze of Madame Odile Jouve (Veronique Silver), the kind and enigmatic proprietor of a tennis club, who was crippled from a suicide attempt after a… read more »
The Green Room is a thoughtful, reverent adaptation of Henry James’ The Altar of the Dead. Julien Davenne (François Truffaut) is a lonely, disillusioned widower who writes for The Globe, an obsolete, nearly defunct newspaper (with a target audience of elderly people, its subscription base is literally dying). From his methodical, dispassionate demeanor, it is… read more »
Jules and Jim is François Truffaut’s deceptively lyrical, yet understatedly complex nouvelle vague film on love and friendship. At the heart of the conflict is the enigmatic Catherine (exquisitely played by the incomparable Jeanne Moreau), whose chameleon personality adapts to suit the relationship she is in. (Note the effect of the equally inscrutable character, Anna,… read more »
Stories of childhood have often been tempered with the melancholic yearning of lost innocence (as in Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants) or the profound weight of human misery (as in Robert Bresson’s Mouchette). In The 400 Blows, François Truffaut introduces his alterego, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud), a young man attempting to break from the… read more »