Truffaut's Last Interview

For this week's blog post I have chosen to contribute the last known interview of François Truffaut, conducted in May of 1984; I have chosen this interview as Truffaut speaks a great deal on his first film of the New Wave period, "The 400 Blows", and, moreover, the beginning of the French New Wave--which was the focus of our class this week.

An excerpt from the interview that best relates to what we talked about in class this week, and which also coincidentally happens to be my favorite part of the interview, is when Truffaut is asked about the success of the French New Wave, to which he replies the following:

At the start of the New Wave, people opposed to the young filmmakers’ new films said, “All in all, what they’re doing is not very different from what was done before.” I don’t know if there was actually a plan behind the New Wave, but as far as I was concerned, it never occurred to me to revolutionize the cinema or to express myself differently from previous filmmakers. I always thought that the cinema was just fine, except for the fact that it lacked sincerity. I’d do the same thing others were doing, but better.

 I like this quote because it shows that, with the start of The New Wave, Truffaut wasn't trying to be especially experimental, or interesting for the sake of being interesting, he was just trying to make honest cinema that he found interesting. Truffaut, one of the pioneers of the New Wave, wasn't explicitly trying to pioneer experimental New Wave cinema; especially with regard to our own historical perspective, it's thought-provoking to consider how the directors of The New Wave saw their own work at the time of its creation.

Here is the link to the interview:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/truffauts-last-interview

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