Auteur François Truffaut

Auteur François Truffaut was born 1932 in Paris and died 1984 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. His mother and stepfather sent Truffaut when he was a young boy to live with various nannies as wll as an important loving grandmother, who nurtured his love of the arts. As a teenager, he was an enthusiastic moviegoer, often found in the front row of Henri Langlois et la Cinémathèque française, which was co-founded by Georges Franju and Jean Mitry. Langlois (1914-1977) was a French film archivist and cinephile. During the Second World War, Langlois and his colleagues helped save many films that were at risk of being destroyed during the Nazi occupation of France

As a pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema, where his film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often credited with providing the ideals that led to the development of the politique des auteurs (auteur theory) on the generation of young cinephiles and critics who would later become the La Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave). Among the directors included were Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Alain Resnais. The future filmmakers were called les enfants de la cinémathèque (children of the cinémathèque), as they could often be found in the front row of packed screenings.

When Truffaut first took a chair at the cinémathèque he spoke that when the screen lit up, it was the first time he could see films that had been banned, films that he had never been allowed to see, films that he didn’t know had existed, and films that ultimately changed his life – the effect was immense, overwhelming, transformative. Even more so, for Langlois would screen the films, back-to-back, without any breaks between them: westerns by John Ford, comedies by Chaplin, and Josef von Sternberg films with Marlene Dietrich; gangster films by Howard Hawks, musicals by Vincent Minnelli and crime dramas by Robert Bresson and Fritz Lang; and, most importantly, films by Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock, who would become his idols. It was akin to seeing them all at once.

For Godard and Truffaut: In Defense of Henri Langlois et la Cinémathèque française scroll below to post script.

After starting his own film club in 1948, Truffaut met film critic, André Bazin, who had a great effect on his professional and personal life, ultimately becoming his spiritual father. Bazin was the head of another film society and became a personal friend and helped him out of various financial and criminal situations during his formative years. At 18, Truffaut joined the French Army in 1950, but spent the next two years trying to escape, and was arrested for attempting to desert the army and incarcerated in military prison. Bazin used his political contacts to get Truffaut released and set him up with a job at his new film magazine, Cahiers du cinéma (Notebook of Cinema), which allowed Truffaut a platform to echo Bazin’s critical film philosophy, the politique des auteurs, a theory which changed the landscape of film criticism and cinema forever.

For more Auteur, scroll below to post script and see the politique des auteurs.

Composer and conductor Maurice Jauber.

Maurice Jaubert (born 1900 in Nice) was a prolific French composer who scored some of the most important French films of the early sound era. Jaubert grew up in a musical household, and began playing the piano aged five. Jaubert left for Paris and studied law and literature at the Sorbonne, but became seduced by classical music. His music was written in a style of clarity, frankness and freedom, in which he did not seek novelty for the sake of it, where his spontaneity is not weighed down by pedantic formulas.

Maurice Jaubert was the second son of François Jaubert, a lawyer who would become the president of the Nice Bar Association. He followed in his father’s footsteps and upon graduation from the Sorbonne, became the youngest lawyer in his hometown.

After Jaubert was awarded the baccalaureat (a college bachelor’s degree), from the Lycée Masséna in Nice in 1916, he enrolled at the Nice Conservatory of Music, where he studied harmony, counterpoint and piano. He was awarded the first piano prize in 1916.

Although Maurice Jaubert understood and appreciated film composing and scoring, he also had other creative musical outlets. As music director of Pathé-Nathan studio, he conducted musical orchestrations of several other composers, including Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud.

Left to right: Maurice Jaubert, French writer Jean Giono, and Brazilian-French film director, Alberto Cavalcanti, courtesy of Underscore,fr/portraits.L

Jaubert was a French army officer in engineering during World War I, and was demobilized in 1922. The next year he completed his musical education in Paris with Albert Groz, while undertaking a variety of music related jobs such as proof correction and checking Pleyela rolls.

The compositions by Jaubert’s in the early 1920s included songs, piano pieces, chamber music and divertissements. He wrote his first stage music in 1925 for a play by Calderón, Le Magicien prodigieux, using the Pleyela, a revolutionary player piano at the time. He was then hired by Pleyel to record rolls on the Pleyela.

Left to right: Maurice Ravel, French Romantic composer and best man at Jaubert’s wedding; Georges Neveux, devenu secrétaire de La Comédie; and Jaubert as the new smiling husband, courtesy of Underscore,fr/portraits.

Jaubert as a young composer, was attracted by technical innovations that could serve his artistic aspirations. While working on the play, Le Magicien prodigieux, he met a young soprano, Marthe Bréga, who would later sing most of his vocal compositions. They married in 1926, with composer, Maurice Ravel as his best man.

In 1929, while pursuing his work for the concert hall and the stage, Maurice Jaubert began writing and conducting for the cinema. He collaborated with prominent directors such as Alberto Cavalcanti (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge), Jean Vigo (Zero for Conduct and L’Atalante), René Clair (Quatorze Juillet), Julien Duvivier (Carnet de bal and La Fin du Jour), and Marcel Carné’s Drôle de drame, Hôtel du Nord and Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows).

Maurice Jaubert and François Truffaut

Thirty years after Maurice Jaubert’s death, director François Truffaut, purchased the publishing rights to four of his orchestral compositions.

It is believed that Truffaut first discovered Jaubert’s compositional music scores on the radio, but it’s never been determined which score he first heard. Perhaps it was Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, where Jaubert in an early scene asked his musicians play the score backwards, similar to what George Martin would do in The Beatles’ recordings 35-years-later. Or, possibly from the film, Carnet de bal, where Jaubert enhanced director Julien Duvivier’s illusionary imagery with his own brillant use of lyrical imagery in his compositional music soundtrack.

Nevertheless, an emotional bond was set, when Truffaut used four of Jaubert’s orchestral compositions to four of his own films: Le Chambre Verte, L’Histoire d’Adèle, L’Homme qui aimait les femmes and L’Argent de poche.

Le Chambre Verte (The Green Room, 1978) was a deeply personal project for Truffaut, where he spent several years working on the film’s script, played the main character, Davenne, and felt a special connection to the theme of honoring and remembering the dead. In the film, he finds a forgotten, derelict altar, and rebuilds it and rechristens it as his own Altar of the Dead. The film is adapted from Henry James’ 1895 short story, Altar of the Dead and also two other works by James: The Beast in the Jungle and The Way It Came. Inside the chapel Davenne places portraits of people from his own life, which included composer Maurice Jaubert, writer Henry James and actor Oskar Werner, taken from footage of Jules and Jim, when Werner was an Austrian-German soldier during the Great War.

Cécilia, played by Nathalie Baye, then better known as the script girl in Truffaut’s1973 film, La Nuit américaine (Day for Night), plays the role of a young woman who helps him build his alter. Complications arise when Cécilia requests that one of the candles represent her former deceased lover, but is rebuffed by Davenne, due to a betrayal by the deceased man in the past.

Le Chambre Verte was one of Truffaut’s most critically praised films, and considered by some as his most personal, but also one of his least successful financially. From that point on, Truffaut’s films were never quite the same, making more popular mainstream films like the crowd pleasing Le Dernier Métro, a 1980 historical drama film, which won ten César Awards for best film, best actor (Depardieu), best actress (Deneuve), best cinematography, best director, best editing, best music, best production design, best sound and best writing. The box office and accolades were immense, but for many serious critics it spelled the kiss of death of Truffaut’s personal films. Truffaut followed with La Femme d’à côté, a film about adultry, and the detective film, Vivement dimanche!, where he did display his personal vision in his love of genre films. In a sense; one for Renoir and one for Hitchcock.

The 1975 film, L’Histoire d’Adèle (The Story of Adèle H.) is a historical drama directed by François Truffaut, and starring Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson and Sylvia Marriott, based on Adèle Hugo’s diaries. The narrative is about Adèle Hugo, the daughter of writer Victor Hugo, once considered the most famous man in France. Victor Hugo was so famous that Adèle would only use the first initial of her surname to hide her identity. Adèle Hugo’s unrequited love for a military officer leads to her downfall. Throughout the film she is on a quest to find the military officer, but, as the film ends, she has become battered and weary to the point of destitution, that when she finally finds the officer, she passes by him without realizing who he is.

As in all four of Truffaut and Jaubert films, the images, sound and music are profound. But much notice was given to 20-year-old Isabelle Adjani, who justifiably received critical acclaim for her performance as Adele H., which led to her status as a legend on the French screen today.

Truffaut’s 1977 film, L’Homme qui aimait les femmes (The Man Who Loved Women) is billed as a romantic comedy about a man who loves women. The film stars Bertrand Morane, played by Charles Denner, a Truffaut regular who had appeared in his earlier films, 1968’s La Mariée était en noir (The Bride Wore Black) and 1972’s Une belle fille comme moi (Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me). The movie begins with one the most joyful funerals in film history, where in attendance are all the women with whom Morane loved in his life. The ensemble of female actors is too irresistible not to list, which features, Brigitte Fossey, the former child star of Clément’s1952 landmark film, Jeux Interdits (Forbidden Games), Leslie Caron, with no introduction required; Nelly Borgeaud as one of Bertrand’s emotionally unstable lovers; Geneviève as Hélène, a lingerie saleswoman; and Valérie Fabienne, one of Bertrand’s former lovers, who he regrets making her think that he wanted a serious relationship with her.

As noted above, Bertrand Morane loved women, as Truffaut did as well; so, let’s close with the opening of one of the cinema’s most euphoric funeral sequences in L’Homme qui aimait les femmes.

The cast also included, Roselyne Puyo as Nicole, in a bit part as an usherette, who in real life is deaf. Truffaut also served as a passionate voice for those who suffered from disabilities; reminding audiences that they too exist, and to also show those who suffer with disabilities, a pathway to live a relativity normal life and join or re-join “normal society.” This act of courage is best illustrated by T-Boy’s Brom Wikstrom. So take a trek to Machu Picchu in a mobile wheelchair with Brom and his bride, Anne’: Looking Back: Lima, Machu Picchu, Peru – Brom Wikstrom, Traveling Boy

In 1976’s L’Argent de poche, Truffaut mixes the story of his actors with childhood experiences and the challenges of a number of children. Scenes include life at school; a toddler and a cat, playing on an open windowsill but falling down unhurt; a young girl, played by Truffaut’s daughter, causing confusion with a bullhorn; Bruno showing his friends how speak to girls; a double date at a movie theater; a child telling a dirty joke; first love and a first kiss. The main character is the motherless Patrick, who lives alone with his father who uses a wheelchair for mobility and an automatic page turner to read books. His mysterious friend, Julien, lives in poverty, has long unwashed hair and cannot stay awake at school due to long nights without sleep, wandering the empty, dark city streets. Patrick notices Julien constantly refuses to change his clothes for gym class, and his curious why does not.

In the end, Julien and his classmates realize why he doesn’t remove his clothes for gym classes; to hide his bruises that cover his body, making it obvious that he was beaten by his parents. Once the criminal news of Julien’s parent’s cruel abuse becomes public, he is rescued from his family, who are arrested as angry mobs of citizens pound their fists on the police wagon, aware that abusing a child is the greatest crime ever commited by a parent.

L’Argent de poche ends with an important message by one of the schoolteachers, Jean-François Stévenin, in a stunning performance by Jean-François Richet, about child abuse, injustice, children’s rights, hope, love and resilience: Of all mankind’s injustices, injustice to children is the most despicable! Life isn’t always fair, but we can fight for justice… If kids had the right to vote, they would have better schools. Life isn’t easy. You must learn to be tough. I don’t mean ‘gangster-tough’. What I mean is having endurance and resilience… Time flies. Before long, you will have children of your own. If you love them, they will love you. If they don’t feel you love them, they will transfer their love and tenderness to other people. Or to things. That’s life! Each of us needs to be loved.”

François Truffaut’s first feature: Les quatre cents coups

Jean-Pierre Leoud plays a loose version of Truffaut in 1959’s “Les quatre cents coups” (“The 400 Blows”), a film highly influenced by Jean Vigo’s “Zero for Conduct” which paralleled tragic instances in Truffaut’s own childhood. Before the film was made, Truffaut dedicated it to his spiritual father, Andre Bazin, who succumbed to death prior to the film’s release. Photograph courtesy of In a Lonely Place Film, Growing-up is Still Difficult.

The narrative of Les quatre cents coup is taken from the point-of-view of Truffaut’s cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel, a reacurring character who appeared in four features and one short film, often referred to as the Antoine Doinel Cycle. The film re-creates the trials of Truffaut’s own childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, and petty crime, with Antoine Doinel played by actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, a veteran of six and a half of Truffaut’s films. Les quatre cents coup marked Truffaut’s passage from a leading film critic to trailblazing auteur of the La Nouvelle Vague. In the 2022 Sight & Sound Critics’ Poll, Les quatre cents coups was ranked 50th as one of the greatest films ever made.

Truffaut and Fatherhood

In both of Truffaut’s public and private life, the concept of fatherhood was an endearing theme; a biological father who abandoned him in his early childhood; Andrea Bazin, his spiritual father; Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock, fathers who mentored his own love and art in cinema; and Jean-Pierre Léaud, who referred to Truffaut as his cinematic father.  Later, after Léaud appeared in Antonie and Collete, he played in a number of Jean-Luc Godard films, and was quoted as saying: If Truffaut is my father, then Godard is my uncle. As Truffaut became older he became obsessed with finding the name of his own biologicall father to the point of hiring private detectives. Eventually the name of his real father was found, a successful French dentist of Jewish ancestry.

François Truffaut: film critic, now director, received the award for Best Director at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1958, François Truffaut was regarded as the enfant terrible of film critics, due to the politique des auteurs, and was banned from the Cannes Film Festival. The next year, he submitted his directorial debut to the festival, Les quatre cents coups and received the award for Best Director and a Palme d’Or nomination. From that year onward, Truffaut’s life dramatically changed forever. 

Truffaut as Actor

English language film director Alfred Hitchcock made cameo appearances in 40 of his 53 surviving major films. Truffaut was also fond of appearing in his own films, but often as a lead character. He also appeared in films made by other directors, such as the playing the role of Claude Lacombe, a French scientist with a bad command of English, in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Later, Truffaut spoke of his own first encounter on the film’s set: When I first arrived on the set of the Spielberg film, I quickly put my book by Stanislawski back into my suitcase.

Jaubert as Composer

As music director of Pathé-Nathan studio, Jaubert conducted the film scores of several other composers, including Arthur Honegger and Darious Milhaud. In the 1930s he gained a reputation as a conductor in France and abroad, most notably for the final season of Marguerite Bériza’s opera company and the season of opéras-bouffes for the 1937 exposition. At the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in 1937, he conducted the premiere of Philippine, an opérette, by Marcel Delannoy with libretto by Henri Lyon and Jean Limozin.

Maurice Jaubert (1900-1940)

Jaubert enlisted in a French army engineering company during World War II which he would command as a reserve captain. When his company mobilized in September 1939, he was fatally wounded after having successfully blown up a bridge. He died at age 45 a few hours later at the Baccarat Hospital on June 1940. His letters to his wife reflected a spirit of sacrifice tinged with deep humanism. Jaubert did not live to hear his last two compositions, written at his base camp. Jaubert’s gravesite rests in Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.

Maurice Jaubert left a legacy of written articles about lectures, his musical tastes and political opinions, which included a passionate support of German-born American composer Kurt Weill, who created a revolutionary kind of opera of sharp social satire in collaboration with the writer Bertolt Brecht.

François Truffaut, (1932-1984)

Truffaut suffered from a brain tumor and underwent an operation at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine on September 12. He died just over a year later in the hospital on October 21, 1984 at the age of 56-years-old. At his bedside were Madeleine Morgenstern, film producer and ex-wife; their two children, Laura and Eva; and actress Fanny Ardant, with wholm he lived with from 1981 to 1984 and had a daughter, Joséphine Truffaut (born September 1983). Ardant apeared in Truffaut’s final two films, La Femme d’à côté and Vivement dimanche! As he had requested, his body was cremated and his ashes were buried also in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. Truffaut was an atheisit, but chose to have a Mass celebrated for him at the church of Saint-Roche, believed to be in the honor of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the time of Truffaut’s death, he was considered by many critics and moviegoers as the most popular French film director of his era. Film audiences flocked to his films, whose main themes were passion, women, childhood and awareness of the disabled, which struck a chord with both critics and moviegoers alike.

To hear more about François Truffaut and Maurice Jaubert, consider purchasing the album, Bandes Sonores Originales Des Films, which includes the scores, L’Argent de poche, L’Histoire d’Adèle, L ‘Homme qui aimait les femmes and Le Chambre Verte, available on vinyl and CD.

And don’t miss film critic Walt Mundkowsky’s film review of François Truffaut’s “Stolen Kisses” – A Look Back – Traveling Boy

Also, if you wish to revisit The Film Soundtracks in Our Lives, Part I, see Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western, Once Upon a Time in the West. You can buy, but not on our site, Morricone’s Complete Spaghetti Western Compilation, also available on vinyl or in three-discs or a five-box set on CD.

POST SCRIPT:

Godard and Truffaut: In Defense of Henri Langlois et la Cinémathèque française

In 1968, French culture minister Andre Malraux tried to fire Henri Langlois by stopping funding of la Cinémathèque française, allegedly due to Langlois’ arrogance and iron-fisted rule. Local and international uproar ensued, and even the prestigious Cannes Film Festival was halted in protest that year. Malraux eventually backtracked. Below is an announcement made in 1968 by Jean-Luc Godard and They were once soliders-in-arms in the art of cinema, but as their careers’ progressed, Godard’s films became increasingly political, specifically Marxist, and dismissed Truffaut as a bourgeoisie film director. Truffaut replied, I make personal films, and I can’t remember the last time I took a bus.

READ More: the politique des auteurs – The policy or politics of auteurs: In his 1954 journal, Une certaine tendance du cinéma français (A certain trend in French cinema) Truffaut wrote as a critic for the French film publication, Cahiers du Cinéma (Cinéma Notebook) and introduced the concept that directors should be considered the real creators of the films they create. When translated literally, the French word auteur means author in English. The term is applied to a film director with complete creative control over their work, often defined as a director who has a recognizable personal style, signature and vision which is evident in each film they make. When applied to the other arts, a painting by van Gogh or a symphony by Mahler is instantly recognizable to audiences. When film critic and director, Jean-Luc Godard wrote that Hitchcock was as profround an artist as Dostoevsky, traditional film critics thought he had gone mad. They failed to recognize that Hitchcock was just as profound in his own medium of film as Dostoevsky was in his medium of literature.

Truffaut referred French directors, Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson and Jacque Tatil as auteurs. He contrasted auteurs with directors of commercial studio films, whom he called, merely “metteur en scène” or stagers of a script created by someone else.

In the US, The Auteur Theory was coined and expanded by New York film critic, Andrew Sarris, the Father of American Auteurism. After Truffaut first introduced this new theory, which was based on film critic, Andre Bazin’s earlier work, it eventually spread to the US in 1963 through the writings of Sarris and film critic/director, Peter Bogdanovich.

But, many US film critics thought the concept was preposterous to the point that a film director should even be called an artist. This applied, in particular, to the highly influential San Franciso based film critic, Pauline Kael, who attacked both the theory and Sarris. The battles between them were legendary, and still discussed today, even though Kael finally embraced the theory and championed her own favorite directions, Robert Altman, Sam Peckinpah, Bernardo Bertolucci and even Truffaut. In the end, Sarris said that Kael was not anti-auteur, but anti-genre, and recognized the director as an artist, but still not necessarily the sole artists in a collaborate medium which included cinematographers, edits, art directors, etc. Sarris counter with, who is in charge of all the collaborators who helps the director create their personal vision of a film?

Truffaut on Cinephiles: But the cinephile is… a neurotic! (That’s not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it’s because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, “When you love life, you go to the movies,” it’s false! It’s exactly the opposite: when you don’t love life, or when life doesn’t give you satisfaction, you go to the movies.

Art is not scientific; why should criticism be? The main complaint against some critics, and a certain type of criticism, is that too seldom do they speak about cinema as such.

Every critic should take to heart Jean Renoir’s remark: All great art is abstract. He should learn to be aware of form, and to understand that certain artists, for example Dreyer or Von Sternberg, never sought to make a picture that resembled reality.

The post The Film Soundtracks in Our Lives, Part II: Composer Maurice Jaubert and Auteur François Truffaut appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Here’s my list, and I encourage you to assault, disagree or perhaps even agree, and send in your own list in our readers’ section at ad***@tr**********.com . What is most important is to keep a dialogue going about cinema as a visual medium for artistic expression where it takes its place among other art forms.

1. Robert Bresson

The point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself. When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it. The ear goes more towards the within, the eye towards the other. – Robert Bresson

Bresson Films for Review:

• Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
• A Man Escaped (1956)
• Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

 2. Yasujirō Ozu

I have formulated my own directing style in my head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others. I can make fried tofu, boiled tofu, stuffed tofu. Cutlets and other fancy stuff, that’s for other directors. – Yasujirō Ozu

Ozu Films for Review:

• I was born, but … (1932)
• Tokyo Story (1953)
• An Autumn Afternoon (1962)  

3. Alfred Hitchcock

If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on. – Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock Films for Review:

• Notorious (1946)
• Rear Window (1954)
• Vertigo (1958)

4. Jean-Luc Godard 

If you want to make a documentary you should automatically go to the fiction, and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality. – Jean-Luc Godard

 Godard Films for Review:

• Vivre sa vie (1962)
• Pierrot le Fou (1965)
• Masculin Féminin (1966)

5. Roberto  Rossellini 

I want you to know how deeply I wish to translate those ideas into images, just to quiet down the turmoil of my brain. – Roberto Rossellini

Rossellini Films for Review:

• Paisà (1946)
• Journey to Italy (1954)
• La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (1966)

6. Orson Welles 

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. – Orson Welles

Welles Films for Review:

• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
• Touch of Evil (1958)

7. Ernst Lubitsch  

There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one. I let the audience use their imaginations. Can I help it if they misconstrue my suggestions? – Ernst Lubitsch

Lubitsch Films for Review:

• Trouble in Paradise (1932) 
• Ninotchka (1939)
• The Shop Around the Corner (1940) 

8. Howard Hawks  

I’d say that everybody has seen every plot twenty times. What they haven’t seen is characters and their relation to one another. I don’t worry much about plot anymore. – Howard Hawks 

Hawks Films for Review:

• Bringing Up Baby (1938) 
• Only Angels Have Wings (1939) 
• Rio Bravo (1959) 

9. Kenji Mizoguchi 

You must put the odor of the human body into images [which] describe for me the implacable, the egoistic, the sensual, the cruel… there are nothing but disgusting people in this world.– Kenji Mizoguchi

Mizoguchi Films for Review:

• The Life of Oharu (1952)
• Ugetsu (1953)
• Sansho the Bailiff (1954) 

10. Jean Renoir  

What interests me is the interpretation of life by an artist. The personality of the film maker interests me more than the copy of an object – Jean Renoir 

Renoir Films for Review:

• The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1935)
• The Human Beast (1938)
• The Rules of the Game (1939) 

11. Max Ophüls  

The highest reaches of the actor’s art begin, I believe, at the point where words cease to play a part. – Max Ophüls

Ophüls Films for Review:

• Letter from an Unknown Woman (1949)  
• La Ronde (1950)
• The Earrings of Madame de… (1953)  

12. Luis Buñuel  

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. Thank God, I am still an atheist – Luis Buñuel

Buñuel Films for Review:

• Viridiana (1961)
• Belle de Jour (1967)
• Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)

 13. Fritz Lang 

To begin with I should say that I am a visual person. I experience with my eyes and never, or only rarely, with my ear – to my constant regret. Each picture has some sort of rhythm which only the director can give it. He has to be like the captain of a ship. – Fritz Lang

Lang Films for Review:

• Metropolis (1927)
• M (1931)
• The Big Heat (1953)

14.  John Ford  

My name’s John Ford. I make westerns – John Ford

Ford Films for Review:

• My Darling Clementine (1946)
• Rio Grande (1950)
• The Searchers (1956)

15. Josef von Sternberg

Shadow is mystery and light is clarity. Shadow conceals – light reveals. To know what to reveal and what to conceal and in what degrees to do this is all there is to art. – Josef von Sternberg

Sternberg Films for Review:

• The Docks of New York (1928)
• The Blue Angel (1930)
• Morocco (1930)

 16. Billy Wilder  

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut. – Billy Wilder

Wilder Films for Review:

• Double Indemnity (1944)
• Sunset Boulevard (1950)
• Some Like It Hot (1959) 

17. Robert Altman 

Making a movie is like chipping away at a stone. You take a piece off here, you take a piece off there and when you’re finished, you have a sculpture. You know that there’s something in there, but you’re not sure exactly what it is until you find it. – Robert Altman 

Altman Films for Review:

• McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
• Nashville (1975)
• Short Cuts (1993)

18. D.W. Griffith 

Remember how small the world was before I came along? I brought it all to life: I moved the whole world onto a 20-foot screen. I made them see, didn’t I? I changed everything. – D.W. Griffith 

 Griffith Films for Review:

• The Birth of a Nation (1915)
• Intolerance  (1916)
• Broken Blossoms (1919) 

19. Abbas Kiarostami 

My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated. – Abbas Kiarostami

Kiarostami Films for Review:

• Close-Up (1990)
• Taste of Cherry (1997)
• The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)  

20. Carl Theodor Dreyer 

Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry. – Carl Theodor Dreyer 

Dreyer Films for Review:

• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
• Day of Wrath (1943)
• Ordet (The Word) (1955) 

21. Michelangelo Antonioni  

After you’ve learned two or three basic rules of cinema grammar, you can do what you like – including breaking those rules. A film you can explain in words is not a real film. – Michelangelo Antonioni

Antonioni Films for Review:   

• L’Avventura (1960)
• L’Eclisse (1962)
• Blow-up (1966)  

22. Buster Keaton 

Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot. Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles. – Buster Keaton 

Buster Keaton Films for Review:

• Sherlock Jr. (1924)
• The General, co-director Clyde Adolf Bruckman (1927)
• Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) 

23. Chantal Akerman   

When people ask me if I am a feminist film maker, I reply I am a woman and I also make films. – Chantal Akerman

Akerman Films for Review: 

• Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
• News from Home (1977)
• D’Est, From the East (1993)

24. Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It’s a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other. – Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fassbinder Films for Review:

• The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972)
• Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
• Berlin Alexanderplatz, a 14-part West German crime television miniseries (1980)  

25. Ousmane Sembène  

I think cinema is needed throughout Africa, because we are lagging behind in the knowledge of our own history. I think we need to create a culture that is our own. I think that images are very fascinating and very important to that end. Our forefathers’ image of women must be buried once for all.  – Ousmane Sembène

Sembene Films for Review:

• La Noire de… Black Girl (1966)
• Mandabi  (1968)
• Xala (1975) 

26. Charles Chaplin 

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease from pain. You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down. We think too much and feel too little. – Charles Chaplin

Chaplin Films for Review: 

• City Lights (1931)
• The Great Dictator (1940)
• Monsieur Verdoux  (1947)

27. Andrei Tarkovsky  

The director’s task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable. – Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky Films for Review:

• Andrei Rublev (1966)
•  Solaris (1972)
• Stalker (1979)  

28. Federico Fellini  

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me. – Federico Fellini

Fellini Films for Review:

• Nights of Cabiria (1957)
•  La Dolce Vita (1960)
• 8½ (1963), 

29. Ermanno Olmi

I really don’t feel exclusive. My ambition instead, perhaps because of my peasant–worker background, is to look at the world with others, not as an aristocratic. – Ermanno Olmi

Olmi Films for Review:  

• Il Posto (1962)
• The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)
• Tickets, an anthology film directed by Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami  and Ken Loach (2005)

30. Akira Kurosawa 

Kurosawa Films for Review:  

For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film. – Akira Kurosawa

• Ikiru (1952)
• Seven Samurai (1954)
• Yojimbo (1961)

31. Sergei Eisenstein  

Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects? – Sergei Eisenstein

Eisenstein Films for Review:    

• Strike (1925)
• Battleship Potemkin (1925)
• Alexander Nevsky (1938) 

32. Éric Rohmer  

Rohmer Films for Review: 

I don’t think that my films are ‘literary’; they are based on the most ordinary things of life. – Éric Rohmer 

• My Night at Maud’s (1969)
• Perceval le Gallois (1978)
• Le Beau Mariage  (1981)

33. Jerzy Skolimowski  

As a poet my mind is trained along the path of poetic associations – I’m not afraid to wander away from direct narrative – I feel safe with a story that tempts you to believe or disbelieve. – Jerzy Skolimowski

Skolimowski Films for Review:  

• Deep End (1970)
• Moonlighting (1982)
• EO (2022) 

34. F.W. Murnau 

Don’t act – think! Films of the future will use more and more of these “camera angles” or, as I prefer to call them, these “dramatic angles.”  – F.W. Murnau 

Murnau Films for Review: 

• Nosferatu (1922)
• The Last Laugh (1924)
• Sunrise (1927).

35. François Truffaut

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure. – François Truffaut

Truffaut Films for Review: 

• The 400 Blows (1959)
• Jules and Jim (1962)
• Day for Night (1973)

36. Miklós Jancsó 

It’s very simple. Cinema has limits that it can’t exceed. It can never go beyond catching the spectator’s interest to make a spectacle. – Miklós Jancsó.

Jancsó Films for Review: 

• The Round-Up (1966)
• The Red and the White (1967)
• Red Psalm  (1971) 

37. Hou Hsiao-hsien  

The  “wu” in  “wuxia” means both “to cut” and “to stop.” It also refers to the weapon – usually a sword – carried by the assassin.  So wuxia stories are concerned with the premise of ending violence with violence. The hero’s journey is epic and transformative – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. – Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien Films for Review: 

• A City of Sadness (1989)
• The Puppetmaster (1993)
• Flowers of Shanghai (1998) 

38. Werner Herzog 

There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization. – Werner Herzog

Herzog Films for Review: 

• Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
• The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
• Stroszek (1977) 

39. Satyajit Ray 

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about. Cinema’s characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind. – Satyajit Ray 

Ray Films for Review: 

• Pather Panchali (1955) 
• Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) (1959)
• Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest)  (1970) 

40. Stanley Kubrick  

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. – Stanley Kubrick

 Kubrick Films for Review:

• Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• The Shining (1980) 

41. Alain Resnais  

I use formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally. – Alain Resnais

Resnais Films for Review:

• Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
• Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
• Mon oncle d’Amérique (1980) 

42. John Cassavetes  

During the actual filming, I’m not really listening to dialogue. I’m watching to see if the actors are communicating something and expressing something. You’re not aware of exactly what people are saying. You are aware of what they are INTENDING and what kind of feeling is going on in that scene. – John Cassavetes  

Cassavetes Films for Review:  

• Faces (1968)
• A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
• Opening Night (1977) 

43. Claire Denis  

I am not at all interested in theories about cinema. I am only interested in images and people and sound. – Claire Denis

Denis Films for Review:

• Chocolat (1988)
• Beau Travail (1999)
• Stars at Noon (2022)  

44. Sam Peckinpah 

The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws – everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he’s only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don’t say to me we’re not violent. – Sam Peckinpah 

Peckinpah Films for Review:

• Ride the High Country (1962)
• The Wild Bunch (1969)
• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) 

45. Andrzej Wajda  

When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it. – Andrzej Wajda 

• Kanał (1957)
• Ashes and Diamonds (1958)
• Man of Iron (1981)  

46. Martin Scorsese 

Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out. – Martin Scorsese

Scorsese Films for Review:

• Mean Streets (1973) 
• Taxi Driver (1977)  
• Raging Bull (1980)   

47. Masahiro Shinoda

One thing I can say is either to look at films very carefully, watch a lot of films, or don’t see any films at all. Just imagine! – Masahiro Shinoda

Shinoda Films for Review:

• Pale Flower (1964)
• Double Suicide) (1969)
• Ballad of Orin (1977) 

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls. – Ingmar Bergman

Bergman Films for Review:

• The Seventh Seal (1958)
• Winter Light (1962)
• Persona (1966) 

49. Sergio Leone 

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite. – Sergio Leone 

Leone Films for Review:

• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
• Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
• Once Upon a Time in America (1984) 

 50. Agnès Varda  

I’m not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman – not unless she is looking for new images. – Agnes Varda

Varda Films for Review:

• Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
• Le Bonheur (1965)
• Vagabond (1985) 

51. Jacques Rivette  

I guess I like a lot of directors. Or at least I try to. – Jacques Rivette 

Rivette Films for Review:

• L’amour fou (1969)
• Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
• La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

52. Clint Eastwood 

I keep working because I learn something new all the time. – Clint Eastwood 

Eastwood Films for Review:

• Unforgiven (1992)
• Mystic River (2003)
• Million Dollar Baby (2004) 

53. Erich von Stroheim

In Hollywood, you’re only as good as your last picture. – Erich von Stroheim

Stroheim Films for Review:

• Blind Husbands (1919)
• Foolish Wives (1922)
• Greed (1924)

54. Chris Marker 

An object dies when the gaze that lights on it has disappeared. – Chris Marker

Marker Films for Review:

• La Jetée (1962)
• Sans Soleil (1983)
• Loin du Vietnam, short in compilation film (1967)

55. Robert Flaherty

Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit. – Robert Flaherty

Flaherty Films for Review::

• Nanook of the North (1922)
• Man of Aran (1934)
• Louisiana Story (1948)

56. Claude Chabrol

Films with a message just make me laugh. – Claude Chabrol

Chabrol Films for Review:

• La Femme infidèle (1969)
• Le Boucher (1970)
• Juste avant la nuit (1971)

57. Michael Powel & Emeric Pressburger 

Of course, all films are surrealist. They are because they are making something that looks like a real world but isn’t. – Michael Powell

Powell & Pressburger Films for Review:

• A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
• Black Narcissus (1947)
•  The Red Shoes (1948

58. Joseph Losey

Films can illustrate our existence… they can distress, disturb and provoke people into thinking about themselves and certain problems. But NOT give the answers. America has abandoned the strong woman of spirituality and is shacking up with the harlot of materialism. – Joseph Losey

Losey Films for Review:

• The Servant (1963)
• Accident (1967)
• The Go-Between (1971)

59. Preston Sturges

I did not think that a good movie was the equivalent of a good stage play, any more than I thought an automobile ride was as exhilarating as a drive behind a spirited horse, nor a trip by steam as soul-satisfying as a voyage by sail. – Preston Sturges

Sturges Films for Review:

• Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
• The Lady Eve (1941)
• Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

60. David Cronenberg

Everybody’s a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We’re all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos. – David Cronenberg

Cronenberg Films for Review:

• Spider (2002)
• Dead Ringers (1988)
• A History of Violence (2005)

61. Carlos Saura

I can’t separate cinema from my life. The two things are interrelated and enrich or impoverish each other. – Carlos Saura

Saura Films for Review:

• Ana and the Wolves (1972)
• Cría cuervos (1975)
• Flamenco Trilogy (1981 – 1986), Bodas de Sangre, Carmen, El Amor Brujo 

62. Wim Wenders 

Film is a very, very powerful medium. It can either confirm the idea that things are wonderful the way they are, or it can reinforce the conception that things can be changed. – Wim Wenders

Wenders Films for Review:

• Alice in the Cities (1974)
• Kings of the Road (1976)
• The American Friend (1977)

63. John Huston

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. – John Huston

Huston Films for Review:

• The Maltese Falcon (1941)
• The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
• The Man Who Would Be King (1975) 

64. Shōhei Imamura  

I am interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality of daily Japanese life obstinately supports itself. – Shōhei Imamura 

Imamura Films for Review:

• Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
• The Ballad of Narayama (1983)
• Black Rain (1989)

65. Nicholas Ray 

An actor can be as talented as another, but if he doesn’t stick to what the director’s intentions are, it all falls down. – Nicholas Ray 

Ray Films for Review:

• In a Lonely Place, (1950 )
• Johnny Guitar (1954)
• Bitter Victory (1957)

66. Jean Vigo 

However paradoxical it may seem, the film studio’s ideal would be to produce only one film which would go on making money forever. – Jean Vigo

Vigo Films for Review:

• Zéro de conduite featurette (1933)
• L’Atalante (1934) 

67. Vittorio De Sica

Art has to be severe. It cannot be commercial. It cannot be for the producer or even for the public. It has to be for oneself. – Vittorio De Sica

De Sica Films for Review:

• Sciuscià (1946)
• Ladri di biciclette (1948)
• Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1970)

68. Jacques Tati

The images are designed, so that after you see the picture two or three times, its no longer my film, it starts to be your film. You recognize the people, you know them, and you don’t even know who directed the picture. – Jacques Tati

Tait Films for Review:

• Les Vacances de M. Hulot (1953)
• Playtime (1967)
• Trafic (1971)

69. Richard Lester

Cinema must reflect the temper of the times. We must choose material not only on the basis of whether we feel deeply, but on whether or not anyone’s bloody well going to see it. – Richard Lester

Lester Films for Review:

• A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
• Petulia (1968)
•  Juggernaut (1974)

70. Kon Ichikawa 

I’ve made various types of films: period dramas, modern dramas, films set in the Meiji period. But I don’t make any distinctions between them – they’re all films. True, with a period drama, there are certain conventions. With a modern drama, there is a different style of shooting. So you have to make changes according to the genre, but I never think, “This is a period drama, so I have to shoot it in such and such a way.” Films are films. If you don’t understand that, then you start filming lies. – Kon Ichikawa

Ichikawa Films for Review:

• The Burmese Harp (1956)
• Odd Obsession (1959)
• Fires on the Plain (1959)

71. Laurent Cantet 

I think we’re going through a really precarious period in film production, and I very much fear that it’s going to be a lot more difficult to make my kind of cinema. If you make films that don’t exactly announce themselves as surefire hits, you feel like you’re walking a tightrope.  I don’t want to take larger scale films in order to show my evolution as a director. – Laurent Cantet

Cantet Films for Review:

• Human Resources  (1999)
• Time Out (2001)
• The Class (2008)

72. Jean-Pierre Melville

I believe that you must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage. – Jean-Pierre Melville

Melville Films for Review:

• Le Doulos (1962)
• Le Samouraï (1967)
• Army of Shadows (1969)

73. Krzysztof Zanussi

I think cinema has a unique capacity to show the passage of time. When the camera can cover a distance of forty years, and you see what really happened to the faces of the actors – how they really aged, with no need for make-up – you see what happens to us. In literature, it is only reference, it’s not sensual; in cinema it’s sensual. – Krzysztof Zanussi

Zanussi Films for Review:

• Contract – FR TV (1980)
• The Constant Factor (1980)
• A Year of the Quiet Sun (1984)

74. Luchino Visconti

I could make a film in front of a wall if I knew how to find the data of man’s true humanity and how to express it. – Luchino Visconti

Visconti Films for Review:

• Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960)
• Il gattopardo (1960)
• Morte a Venezia (1971)

75. David Lynch

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too. – David Lynch

Lynch Films for Review:

• Blue Velvet (1986)
• Lost Highway (1997)
• Mulholland Drive (2001)

Readers, feel free to comment or send your own lists to ad***@tr**********.com .

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