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The BFI has been having a season of films by the French director François Truffaut, which has reminded me how important he has been in my life.

Les 400 Coups (1959)

The still above is from his first feature film, Les 400 Coups, which I saw in the summer of 1959, not too long after it came out, and have re-seen many times since. It shows the 14-year old Jean-Pierre Léaud as Truffaut’s alter ego Antoine Doinel, a role he was to play in four more films over the next twenty years.

(Truffaut interviewed hundreds of youngsters, looking for a perfect Antoine. Even if your French isn’t very good, click below to see young Jean-Pierre’s screen test. You’ll understand why he was chosen).

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3z4ka_casting-de-jeanpierre-leaud-pour-le_creation

Antoine, like his creator, was brought up by his mother and stepfather, neither of whom knew what to do with him. Truffaut saw his first film (Paradis Perdu by Abel Gance) at the age of 8 and was so excited that he would often skip school to go to the cinema. The young Antoine is no great cinephile, though he and his best friend René do, understandably, steal a photo of Harriet Anderson in Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika from a display in front of a cinema.

Antoine, like François, gets into trouble at school and, while bunking off, steals a typewriter from his father’s office (which, according to Nina Caplan in the New Statesman earlier this year, is something borrowed from Truffaut’s own childhood). He is eventually sent to a special school, from which he escapes, heading to the sea which he has never seen.

The final sequence of Les 400 Coups is unforgettable. For the best part of two minutes the camera tracks Antoine, in his rough blue military type uniform, as he runs tirelessly along, the only noise being the pounding of his feet and occasional bird song. Then the main musical theme, picked out on a piano, comes in, as the sea appears from Antoine’s point of view. The camera pans over the water, while violins repeat the theme more loudly.

An oboe enters, introducing a variant of the theme and, briefly, we see Antoine from behind, cutting to a side view of him descending a set of wooden steps to the sand. As he approaches the sea, the original theme returns, slowing down, played pizzicato on a solo violin, with the sound of the waves as its accompaniment. The camera movement stops to let him enter the sea, where he paddles gently for a few seconds, until he turns, walks back towards the camera and us, stopping just as the camera zooms in on his head and shoulders, a final freeze frame while the theme ends, unresolved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s77hCJwrosM

(Someone has put all of the Antoine Doinel films, with English subtitles, on YouTube. The links below take you to the opening sequences of each film, after which you can watch the rest, if you want).

Truffaut

In 1948, aged 16, Truffaut started up a film club, Cercle Cinémanie, which led to his meeting the man who would turn his life around: André Bazin, film critic of Le Parisien libéré, who was running his own cinéclub, Travail et culture - on the same night as the Cercle Cinémanie. The young Truffaut tried to persuade Bazin to change his club to another night.

This act of outrageous chutzpah must have impressed the 30 year old Bazin, because he introduced him to a circle which was to include the likes of Alain Resnais, Chris Marker and Alexandre Astruc, all future directors. Bazin’s interest in the young man wasn’t enough to keep Truffaut out of the Parisian juvenile centre at Villejuif, and - later - a religious home in Versailles. But, eventually, Bazin took him on as his personal secretary and, in 1950, the young man published his first article, on La Règle du Jeu, by his hero Jean Renoir.

At this point, when he appeared set on a clear path, he made the incomprehensible decision to join the army (being sent to military prison for some months). Once again Bazin came up trumps, and Truffaut, this time, launched himself into his career as a film critic, turning out an endless series of articles (including 170 pieces for Cahiers du cinéma, co-founded by Bazin in 1951).

During this same decade he directed three short films, starting with Une Visite in 1954, an immature piece which he only agreed to show once in public. Three years later came Les Mistons (still worth watching), and, in 1958, a very short film called Une Histoire d’eau, co-directed by a certain Jean-Luc Godard.

By now he had become reconciled with his stepfather, who lent him the money to start work on Les 400 Coups. Shooting started on the morning of 10 November but, by a sad twist of fate, André Bazin died of leukaemia that very night, so never knew what his protégé was capable of: the series of 21, generally well received, feature films he was to make before his own untimely death in 1984, aged just 51.

Antoine et Colette (1962)

Truffaut was to allow Antoine Doinel rather less success in his working life, concentrating more on his loves and infidelities. We first catch up with him, at the age of 17, in Antoine et Colette, Truffaut’s contribution to a portmanteau film entitled L’amour à 20 ans (Love at 20). Antoine is working for Philips, in the LP production department, regularly attending classical concerts put on by the Jeunesses Musicales de France, where he spots Colette (Marie-France Pisier) sitting a few rows in front, to his left, nervously pulling her skirt down over her knees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JMVXdsHv94

This clip contains the first 7 minutes or so of the film, with English subtitles, starting with a voiceover explaining what has happened to Antoine since we last saw him on the beach at the end of Les 400 Coups, and ending as he first glimpses Colette.

Antoine moves to an apartment directly opposite where Colette lives and soon becomes quite a favourite with her parents, especially the mother. Colette is still at school, but doesn’t allow herself to be impressed by the fact that Antoine has a job and never allows him the slightest intimacy. And it ends sadly, with an older, more mature man arriving to take Colette out, leaving her parents and Antoine seated at the dinner table looking surprised and rather distressed.

Baisers volés (Stolen Kisses) (1968)

When we next meet Antoine, six years later, he is about to be discharged from military service as unfit. He has been writing to Christine Darbon (Claude Jade) but she is away when he arrives at her house, though her parents are glad to see him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBE6t3PVy2s&playnext=1&list=PLEFA111F70F3B43E5

Christine comes to the hotel where Antoine is working as a night porter, which puts him in touch with a private detective who gives him a job. The owner of a shoe shop (Michael Lonsdale) arranges for Antoine to work for him - to spy on the staff - and he falls for Fabienne (the amazing Delphine Seyrig), wife of the owner.

Domicile Conjugal (Bed and Board) (1970)

By now Antoine and Christine are married, though things turn out far from perfect.

Antoine is still finding it difficult to find decent work. He starts off dying flowers, then has a weird job involving remote controlled model boats.

Though the marriage is in trouble, the tone of the film is light-hearted on the whole, especially the sequences in and around the communal courtyard where the couple live (doubtless a deliberate homage to Jean Renoir’s 1936 classic Le Crime de Monsieur Lange).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGectrbTZ6Y

L’amour en fuite (Love on the Run) (1979)

This title reminds us how often Antoine is, literally, on the run in the whole series of films, from the race to the sea at the end of Les 400 Coups, via the mad dash through the traffic for a quick session with a prostitute before going to Christine’s house at the start of Baisers volés and on to the start of L’amour en fuite.

Here he has to rush away from the apartment of his new girlfriend Sabine (Dorothée) to meet Claude for their divorce proceedings. (The lawyer representing him talks to a woman colleague, who turns out to be Colette, all grown up in her black robes. As she sees Antoine run off again after the session she remarks ‘Ah, il n’a pas changé, celui-la’ (He really hasn’t changed, I see).

But here everything is in movement as the film leaps between the new Antoine (published novelist, proofreader, dapper and more mature) and a series of flashbacks to his earlier life: Christine thinking back with nostalgia to the days of their happiness together; Colette reading the autobiographical elements in his novel, Les Salades de l’Amour, alternately moved by the sadder parts of Antoine’s childhood, intrigued by the account of her friendship with him, and indignant when the writer changes the facts to tidy up reality - making Colette’s family move to be near him, rather than the opposite, for example).

And, gradually, a series of meetings allows the protagonists as well as us - faithful viewers of the whole series - to find out more about the past: motives as well as truths about relationships. Antoine learns from Colette why she was never prepared to let him get really close to her; then, in an extraordinarily moving sequences, he bumps into Monsieur Lucien, his mother’s lover, from whom he learns of his mother’s deep love for him, despite her apparent indifference; later, a chance meeting between Colette and Claude brings about further revelations, as a result of which the feelings of resentment which both women share become softened, and a decision is made to intervene so that Sabine and Antoine will be reunited; and, finally, the two are reconciled after Antoine explains the truth behind their original meeting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieUZBnmTJgE

Epilogue

François Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud appear together in La nuit américaine (Day for Night, 1973), as Ferrand, the director, and Alphonse, the male lead of a film within a film, Je Vous Présente Paméla, being made at the Studios Victorine in Nice. There is a clear reference to the Antoine Doinel series, a recurring dream that the director has of a smartly dressed lad - the age of Antoine in Les 400 Coups - walking through a town after dark. In the final version of the dream the boy pokes a walking stick through the wire fence in front of a cinema, enabling him to steal a number of stills of Citizen Kane.

In fact there is also a reference forward, in that Dani (the actress playing Liliane, girlfriend of Alphonse) was to be cast six years later as a violin student of Christine’s - and mistress of Antoine - in a flashback when she and Colette are discussing him in L’amour en fuite.

But what I really like about La nuit américaine is what Truffaut has to say about film making, starting with his voiceover early in the movie.

Un tournage de film ça ressemble exactement au trajet d'une diligence au Far West. D'abord, on espère faire un bon voyage et puis, très vite, on en vient à se demander si on arrivera à destination.

(Making a film is just like taking a stagecoach in the Far West. At first you hope to have a pleasant journey, but you soon start wondering if you’re going to get there at all.)

Later, when Liliane walks out on a distraught Alphonse, the director tells him:

Les films sont plus harmonieux que la vie. Il n'y a pas d'embouteillages dans les films, pas de temps mort. Les films avancent comme des trains, tu comprends, comme des trains dans la nuit. Des gens comme toi, comme moi, tu le sais bien, on est fait pour être heureux dans le travail, dans notre travail de cinéma.

(Films run more smoothly than real life. There are no traffic jams, no boring moments. Films just go on and on like trains, you see; trains in the night. People like you and me, you know, we’re only happy in our job, making films).

But the nicest quote of all is from Joelle, the continuity girl (played by Nathalie Baye in her first decent role) who, when she learns that Liliane has walked off the set, says

Je laisserais un mec pour un film mais jamais un film pour un mec.

(I’d leave a guy for a film, but never a film for a guy).

You can’t say fairer than that.

Postscript: the music

The music in the Doinel films is memorable, whether as background (as in Les 400 Coups, written by Jean Constantin) or the tunes used for the credit sequences.

For the latter, two films stand out. In L’amour en fuite the lovely title song, by Alain Souchon, is reprised at the end, when a couple enter the record shop (where Sabine works, and she and Antoine have just made up), and ask for the latest record by Alain Souchon, which is - of course - L’amour en fuite.

But my favourite is Que reste-t-il de nos amours? (What is left of our loves?), by the great Charles Trenet, from which Truffaut took the phrase baisers volés (stolen kisses).

Here is the full text in French. If you need a translation, watch the opening credits again.

Ce soir le vent qui frappe à ma porte

Me parle des amours mortes

Devant le feu qui s' éteint

Ce soir c'est une chanson d' automne

Dans la maison qui frissonne

Et je pense aux jours lointains

{Refrain:}

Que reste-t-il de nos amours

Que reste-t-il de ces beaux jours

Une photo, vieille photo

De ma jeunesse