Fahrenheit 451--Bradbury by Way of Truffaut

Montag prepares to burn.

Guy Montag is a "fireman" in a futuristic society--except that he starts fires as opposed to putting them out. To be precise, Montag (Oskar Werner) burns books since reading is forbidden by the government. Montag lives in a nice house in the suburbs with his vacuous wife Linda (Julie Christie). It's a mundane existence, but he doesn't question it until he encounters a neighbor, Clarisse (also Christie), on the train to work. A schoolteacher, she asks if Montag has ever read one of the books he burns.

That single questions sparks his curiosity, leading Montag to secretly confiscate a copy of David Copperfield. He reads it and becomes passionate about literature--any kind of literature. Soon, he is hiding books all over the house and taking significant risks to satisfy his irrepressible desire to read.

Oskar Werner as Montag.

Made in 1966, Fahrenheit 451 is the first adaptation of Ray Bradbury's popular 1953 science fiction novel of the same title. Bradley wrote his book in a library's basement paying ten cents per hour to use a typewriter. The title is the result of a phone call to a fireman, in which Bradbury asked him at what temperature paper began to burn. (Bradbury admits he used the given answer...without conducting any additional research.)

The film adaptation was an awkward proposition from the beginning. Critic-turned-filmmaker Francios Truffaut was chosen to direct and co-write the screenplay based on his international successes The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim. However, it was an English-language production and Truffaut did not speak English at the time. He also frequently clashed on the set with his star, Oskar Werner, even though Werner had starred in the earlier Jules and Jim (1962). Their confrontations became so fractured that Werner had his hair cut during the filming, thereby creating continuity challenges for Truffaut.

The casting of the lead actresses also sparked a minor controversy. Originally, Julie Christie was supposed to play Linda only. Actresses such as Jane Fonda and Jean Seberg were considered for the role of Clarisse. Truffaut liked the idea of casting the same actress in both roles, as he saw Linda and Clarisse as opposites. However, Bradbury--who held a favorable impression of the film version--thought it would have been more effective to have different actresses in the parts.

Julie Christie as Linda and as Clarisse.

Taken as a whole, Fahrenheit 451 is a thought-provoking motion picture that seems cold and distant. Clarisse is the only character that evokes any kind of warmth. If the intent was to show Montag transform from an empty shell to a feeling person, then it simply doesn't work. Werner's character remains an enigma at the end, though he now devotes himself to keeping literature alive. Perhaps, the deteriorating relationship between Werner and Truffaut carried over into the actor's performance.

Interesting ideas abound, from a newspaper which contain only pictures to a class Montag teaches to novice fireman on where to look for hidden books. Even the opening credits are clever, in that they are read aloud and never shown on screen.

Truffaut turned to a former Hitchcock collaborator, Bernard Herrmann, to compose the score. It is one of the film's highlights, though the other worldly quality sometimes reminded me of his music for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Below is a clip from Fahrenheit 451, courtesy of our YouTube channel. The symbol shown repeatedly is a salamander, not a dragon.

Truffaut's Homage to Hitchcock: The Bride Wore Black

Jeanne Moreau as Julie.

French director and critic Francois Truffaut originally published his extensive Alfred Hitchcock interviews in 1966. The book, which has come to be known as Hitchcock/Truffaut, is a brilliant look into the mind of a master filmmaker. So, it comes as no surprise that Truffaut would eventually make a film that pays tribute to Hitchcock's themes and style.

The Bride Wore Black (1968) looks and sounds like a Hitch picture. It was based on a 1940 novel by Cornell Woolrich, who also penned the short story that inspired Rear Window. The film's tense score was composed by Hitchcock's longtime collaborator Bernard Herrmann.

Julie and her victim on the balcony.

It opens with Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau) bidding farewell to her young niece at a train station...only to pass through the train and depart in another direction. She then tries to see a man named Bliss, but his building attendant will not allow her into the man's apartment. Later, when Bliss is hosting a party with his fiancee, Julie appears in a white evening gown. She lures Bliss onto a balcony to flirt mysteriously with him. When she apparently loses her scarf in the breeze, it catches on a tree branch near the railing. She asks Bliss to retrieve it for her and, as he precariously straddles the railing, Julie pushes him off the balcony to his death. She then quickly and silently exits the party.

Julie and a glass of poison.

On a train to her next destination, Julie opens a small black book and crosses off one of five mens' names. Her goal, it appears, is to murder each of them.

The motive behind Julie Kolher's vendetta isn't revealed until less an hour remains in the film's 107-minutes running time. The big reveal isn't particularly surprising, but that's not a detriment to The Bride Wore Black. In Hitchcock lingo, the reason why Julie commits the murders is the film's "McGuffin." In other words, her motive propels the plot, but really serves no other purpose. The Bride Wore Black is an exercise in style, with each murder comprising a mini-narrative.

Michael Lonsdale as the father.

The best scene has Julie infiltrating a household by posing as the five-year-old son's kindergarten teacher. By quizzing the child earlier in the day, she knows just enough to pull off the ruse. The child, of course, states that Julie is not his teacher multiple times. But she laughs it off and the father doesn't take his son seriously. It makes sense, of course, to believe an adult over a child. The father, whose wife has been called out of town on an emergency (thanks to Julie), also becomes interested in the attractive woman who is suddenly alone with him once his son goes to bed.

Indeed, Julie's most powerful weapon in her revenge scheme is her allure. Four of her five targets are drawn to her out of lust, loneliness, or perhaps even love. In The Bride Wore Black, the males are most certainly the weaker sex.

As Hitchcock did in Marnie (1964), Truffaut uses color and lighting to create contrasts. Moreau, whose character is a victim as well as a killer, wears only black or white outfits during the entire film. Her first murder takes place on a bright, sunny day whereas her third murder occurs during a dark thunderstorm. The Bride Wore Black was only Truffaut's second color film and he had numerous on-set altercations with cinematographer Raoul Coutard on how to light the film. Their disagreements became so numerous that Moreau has stated that she was forced to direct some of the scenes.

An arrow protrudes from the back of Julie's fourth victim.

It's still uniquely a Truffaut film, even if it lacks the warmth associated with his most celebrated works. I am sure I'm in the minority, but having viewed it twice now, it may be my favorite Truffaut film despite its flaws (I wish Julie's motive was revealed later in the film). Incidentally, if the plot reminds you of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies, you are not alone--though Tarantino claims to have never seen The Bride Wore Black.

The plot closely follows Cornell Wooldrich's novel, though Truffaut changes the ending. In fact, it's one of my all-time favorite film endings and cleverly explains what seems like two horrible mistakes on Julie's part. There are many Hitchcockian films, but none quite like The Bride Wore Black. It pays tribute to the Master of Suspense, but never stoops to imitation as the bride efficiently eliminates the men who shattered her dreams of happiness.


This review is part of the Vive La France Blogathon hosted by The Lady Eve's Reel Life and Silver Screen Modes. Click here to check out all the marvelous posts in this blogathon. Below is a scene from The Bride Wore Black, courtesy of our YouTube channel:

The Birds--A Matter of Misdirection

Alfred Hitchcock’s most divisive thriller finds the Master of Suspense in magician mode. On the surface, The Birds is a traditionally-structured horror film, in which the bird attacks build progressively to three of Hitchcock’s most intense sequences. However, this is just Hitchcock performing a little playful sleight of hand with the audience. Our feathered friends play a strictly peripheral part in moving the plot along. In actuality, The Birds is a relationship movie about another memorable Hitchcock mother, her adult son, and the women who threaten to come between the two—a theme explored by Hitchcock earlier in Notorious and Psycho.

In The Birds, the son is the bland, but likable, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). Mitch’s mother (wonderfully played by Jessica Tandy) fears losing her son to another woman—not because of jealousy, but because she can’t stand the thought of being abandoned. Young socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) views Mitch as a stable love interest, something she needs as she strives to live a more meaningful life. And Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) is the spinster schoolteacher, willing to waste her life to be near Mitch after failing to pry him from his mother.

Mitch's mother places herself between the lovebirds,
turning her back to ignore Melanie.

These characters come together when Melanie follows Mitch to his home in Bodega Bay after a flirtatious exchange in a pet store. Melanie’s arrival coincides with the beginning of the bird attacks. It’s almost as if the birds arrive to prevent any potential love between Mitch and Melanie, perhaps an extension of Mitch’s mother’s anger at having to defeat another rival for her son’s love. (Taken to the extreme, there could a parallel between the birds and the creature created by Morbius in Forbidden Planet).

However, although the birds initially come between Mitch and Melanie, they eventually have a very different impact. They allow Melanie, who first appears spoiled and shallow, to show her courage and vulnerability. In the end, Mitch’s mother no longer sees Melanie as a threat, but as a woman worthy of her son. Once the friction between those two characters is resolved, the bird attacks stop and the movie ends. Hitchcock’s conclusion—often criticized as ambiguous—is perfectly logical.

Hitchcock goes to great lengths to misdirect his audience by disguising The Birds as a conventional thriller. Always concerned with audience expectations, the Master of Suspense told French director/film critic Francois Truffaut in Hitchcock, a brilliant collection of interviews: “I didn’t want the public to become too impatient about the birds, because that would distract them from the personal story….” For that reason, the first bird attack comes at twenty-five minutes into the film and occurs toward the end of a playful scene in which Melanie races her boat while Mitch drives along the lake road trying to beat her to the dock.


Mitch, with all the women in his life, looks
concerned after the birthday party bird attack.

From that point on, the birds become progres-sively more menacing and their appear-ances more frequent: Mitch sees them on the power lines after Melanie visits for dinner; a bird crashes into Annie’s front door and dies; birds swoop down to break up a children’s birthday party; they fly through the open flue into Mitch’s house; and Mitch’s mother finds the first human victim in a farmhouse. (I love how Hitchcock uses broken teacups in this scene to foreshadow the impending horror. Earlier, he shows Mitch’s mom picking up broken teacups after the birds-in-the-flue incident. Then, when she visits the apparently empty farmhouse, she sees broken teacups hanging on their hooks—just before discovering the bloody, eyeless body.)

Melanie trapped in the phone booth, a metaphor for
her previously sheltered, empty life.

The remainder of the film consists of the three major set pieces: the bird attack outside the school-house; the attack after the gas station blows up; and Melanie’s struggle with the birds in the attic. Again, following the classic horror film structure, Hitchcock separates each sequence with a transition scene that allows the audience to relax and catch its breath. The scene in the restaurant with the ornithologist is one of Hitch’s rare missteps in The Birds; as Truffaut points out, it goes on too long without contributing to the narrative structure. I won’t dissect the birds’ attack on the school children—it’s an iconic sequence—but I strongly recommend that Hitchcock fans seek out Dan Auiler’s Hitchcock’s Notebooks, which includes the director’s hand-drawn storyboard and notes.

Though less famous, the burning gas station sequence is no less impressive. In the midst of the terrifying chaos, Hitchcock shows Melanie protected—and trapped—inside a phone booth. This “glass cage” is a marvelous metaphor for her previously sheltered life (also symbolized by the lovebirds in the birdcage) from which she is rescued by Mitch (literally…when he pulls her from the phone booth).

The three years between Psycho and The Birds (1963) comprised the longest gap between Hitchcock films up to that point. Much of that time was spent dealing with the technical difficulties in bringing Daphne du Maurier’s short story to the screen. In Truffaut’s book, Hitchcock admits that he discovered narrative weakness in The Birds as he was shooting it. A compulsive pre-planner, who storyboarded every shot in every film, Hitchcock began to improvise during the shooting of The Birds: “The emotional siege I went through served to bring out an additional creative sense in me.”

That creative genius is captured for all to see in The Birds. From its use of bird sounds in lieu of music to its disturbing closing shot, The Birds is an atypical Hitchcock film which finds the director in a mischievous mood. He gives us a classic chiller, but then reveals that it’s all wrapping paper and that’s what inside is a relationship drama. It’s an unexpected gift and, hey, Hitchcock even includes a birthday party for us—although it’s disrupted by those darn birds!

There's nothing ambigious about the ending--the real
conflict has been resolved.

A Panel Discussion on Acclaimed Filmmaker and Critic Francois Truffaut

Francois Truffaut (1932-1984).

After a long hiatus, we're reviving our "3 on 3 panel" this month. The concept is that we ask three experts to answer three questions on a single classic film topic. This week, the Cafe poses three questions about French film critic and filmmaker Francois Truffaut. Our panel of three Truffaut experts consists of: Richard Finch, co-founder of the Facebook group Foreign Film Classics; Ray Keebaugh, a frequent contributor to the Foreign Film Classics group; and Sam Juliano, who writes about classic movies at his blog Wonders in the Dark.

1. What Francois Truffaut film would you recommend as an introduction to someone who has never seen any of his works?

Jean-Pierre Léaud in The 400 Blows.

Richard Finch: The Truffaut film I would recommend as a starting point is his very first one, The 400 Blows. It’s about a lonely and alienated boy, about 14 years old, growing up in Paris and finding solace in books and movies. If you read a biography of Truffaut, the film is clearly autobiographical and like most such first films (and novels, for that matter) heartfelt and moving. It clearly has the feeling of lived experience to it. It has one of the most haunting and enigmatic final shots in all cinema, Truffaut’s version of the last shot of Garbo in Queen Christina. In a poll at the excellent film blog site Wonders in the Dark last year for the top films about childhood (79 made the cut), it was chosen #1.

Ray Keebaugh:  If someone had never seen a movie by Truffaut, he is not likely to be acquainted with foreign films nor with movies beyond those made in America. I’d recommend The Story of Adele H., then Shoot the Piano Player or Jules and Jim. If his/her appetite was not stimulated enough to seek more Truffaut after those extremes, there's not much else I can do.

Sam Juliano: The venerated critic-director's very first film--The 400 Blows--would be my choice for the newbie approaching his work. My own history with The 400 Blows dates back to the early 1970s and the revival house screenings it enjoyed in such banner Manhattan institutions like The Thalia, the New Yorker and the Bleecker Street Cinemas. The film was almost always paired with Jules and Jim, a 1961 work that cemented Truffaut’s reputation as one of the rare people who followed a successful career as a critic with an even more renowned one as a director. I first saw it as an impressionable 17 year-old, and as such it moved me deeply, perhaps more than any other European film had, and led to discovering critical writings on the film by the most noted writers of the time. In the beginning--as should be expected for one so green behind the ears--it was actor Jean-Pierre Léaud's familial alienation, the bittersweet, seductive music by Jean Constantin, and the most haunting final shot the cinema ever showcased. It sent shivers down my spine and still does today. There is a universality in The 400 Blows that, while not exclusive in Truffaut's canon, is perhaps most accessible in this, a film that is easy to connect with and executed with the director's trademark aching lyricism. 

2. What do you believe was Truffaut's most important contribution to world cinema?

Truffaut interviewing Hitchcock.

Richard:  Truffaut made several important contributions to world cinema. First, he was one of the original theorists and practitioners of the French New Wave, a movement that has had immense influence on subsequent filmmakers. He and others like Jean-Luc Godard first proposed what is called the auteur theory, the concept that the director of a film is its author, the same as the writer of a book is its author. They developed an informal manifesto of a new type of film typified by freedom of style and and an emphasis on personal expression. Second, because for inspiration they looked to the Hollywood directors who, even though working in the studio system, consistently left their own stamp on their films. They brought serious attention to American directors like Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and Nicholas Ray. These directors had been dismissed by American critics as mere purveyors of entertainment. Third, as Truffaut’s style and choice of subject changed over his 30-year career, he made it acceptable that directors can grow and develop--not just stick with their youthful dogma and keep making the same movie again and again. In many ways, his earliest films can be quite different from those of his maturity.

Ray:  It’s something to be argued among critics and “serious” film students. A cinematographer would not provide the same answer as, say, an editor. Different directors would not necessarily agree among themselves, and you may be certain critics wouldn’t. For me, choosing e pluribus unum, I love the eerie ease with which he draws us quickly into stories--often about destroyed lovers--like an unselfconscious poet. Narrative was not something to be sacrificed for his "art." It was what his art served. How he did it so entertainingly reflects the director's youthful love for movies, which, unlike some of his characters, did not come to a shocking, destructive end (except that it was so early). Truffaut also restored dignity to adolescence by weeding out all that false Hollywood Blue Denim crap. 

The Wild Child (1970).

Sam:  Truffaut's most important contribution to world cinema was his mastery of humanism, ranging from childhood to old age, and embracing various time periods and settings. His intoxicating cinematic lyricism was his manner and his foray into psychological realism. He was understandably celebrated for his ability to investigate the childhood experience. When movie fans are asked to identify the prime proponents of the cinema of childhood, the names of Steven Spielberg and Francois Truffaut invariably dominate the discussion. In the case of the former, the label seems more than justified all things considered, but of the Frenchman Truffaut’s twenty-one films, only three could reasonably be framed as films dealing with and populated by kids. The reason for the misrepresentation is undoubtedly the fact that the New Wave master’s debut feature, The 400 Blows, is one of the most celebrated and influential films of all-time, and the one most often named as the ultimate work on adolescent alienation. To be sure, Truffaut did chronicle the aging process of his Antoine Doniel character a series of films like Bed and Board and The Soft Skin, but at that point the youthful parameter had expired. In 1969, he explored the true-life story of a deaf and dumb boy raised in the outdoors--The Wild Child--and then seven years later, he wrote and directed what was to be his final foray into the pains and wonders of childhood with his magical Small Change. 

3. What do you think is Truffaunt's masterpiece and what is your personal favorite? Explain your choices.

Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim.

Richard:  My personal favorite of Truffaut’s films and what I consider his masterpiece is one and the same: Jules and Jim. It’s one of those films that just grab you and never leave your mind. Its centerpiece is the puzzling but hypnotic character Catherine, played by Jeanne Moreau, one of the greatest of all screen actresses, in what I think is her greatest performance. She plays a woman who has an affair with two best friends at the same time--a bona fide ménage à trois, quite a daring subject for its time, even for the French! Its influence can be seen in American films as diverse as Bonnie and Clyde and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. For me, it’s one of those films of which I can say without equivocation: “Once seen, never forgotten.”

Ray:  I love this question because it separates moviegoers from critics.  A critic has to regard a director's masterpiece as his favorite because what would it say about a critic's "taste" if he/she didn't? I'd say The 400 Blows is the "masterpiece." My favorite Truffaut movie would be (since I have to choose) Jules and Jim.

Sam:  The 400 Blows would also be my choice for the director's absolute masterpiece. No matter what you opt for, the landmark 1959 film remains his piece de resistance in a career that produced twenty-six films. Many regard the film as the most defining in the French New Wave movement, and by any barometer of measurement, it is seen as a definitive work in the childhood films cinema, finishing at or near the top in various online polls and per the declaration of film historians. Yet, the film’s preeminence as a work of psychological insight into the mind of a child has also pigeon-holed the director’s reputation with some as the cinema’s most celebrated director of these kind of films, or at least the equal of the American Steven Spielberg, when in fact the celebrated Gallic has helmed only three films about childhood. Such is the magnitude of The 400 Blows’s impact and continuing legacy that it has succeeded in forging a perception of a legendary director that is markedly in error, though even if it were true it wouldn’t diminish his top level artistic standing. Truffaut's legacy and contribution to world cinema doesn't only rest with his profound studies of childhood, but with the human condition, where he sits with the most renowned practitioners in the art.