Quentin Tarantino raises the bread again talking about movie legends who are not alive and now the victim is the icon of the French New Wave, François Truffaut. In the September issue of Sight & Sound, the director and co-host of his ‘Video Archives Podcast’ program, Roger Avary, discussed the films of Hitchcock’s French heir, Claude Chabrol and, incidentally, Truffaut.
A mania that comes from afar
François Truffaut appeared at a specific point in the conversation to extol Chabrol’s cinema:
“Chabrol’s thrillers are so much better than lousy Truffaut-Hitchcock movies, which I find just plain awful. Although I’m not a big fan of Truffaut anyway. With a few exceptions, like ‘Intimate Diary of Adela H,’ But in his For the most part, I feel for Truffaut what I feel for Ed Wood. I think he’s a very clumsy, passionate amateur.”
There were already several darts fired at Truffaut in the novel Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where an excerpt explains Cliff Booth’s character’s disdain for Truffaut, quite possibly projecting his own views on the legendary French filmmaker:
“ He tried twice with Truffaut, but it didn’t come through. Not because the movies were boring (they were), but that wasn’t the only reason Cliff didn’t get in. The first two movies he saw (in a Truffaut double feature) just didn’t grab him. The first movie, ‘The 400 Blows’, left him cold. He really didn’t understand why that little boy did half the shit he did. And he thought the depressed chumps in ‘Jules and Jim’ were a fucking burden.”
It is not the first or the last time that we will hear vehement opinions from Quentin Tarantino. He recently despised the third installment of ‘Indiana Jones’ and it is likely that since his podcast already has 8 episodes, it would not be unusual to find many conversations of the kind. Compare Truffaut with the worst director in the history of cinema It is a new provocation that should not be taken too seriously either, but at least he has not said it in the middle of promoting any film. It’s that loudmouth in its natural state.