My Movie Journal is Better Than Yours

Other Movies Seen By This Director (2)
- The 400 Blows
- Jules and Jim

Notes History

Date Viewed	Venue	Note
11.10.13	DVR	This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2013 AKA The Vanishing Fiancee. A while back I got pretty fixated on Truffaut. I read his biography, some of his reviews, had already read his interview book with Hitchcock, and tried to track down all of his films. I really liked most of them and managed to track down all but two. Years later, again thanks to TCM, I can cross one of those elusive films off the list. Truffaut stars as a World War I vet who's kind of obsessed with death and refuses to forget those in the past but instead lives with them always. He meets a younger woman similarly affected and... I don't know... talk about it for a while. Then he renovates a chapel and puts pictures of all his dead friends in it. At the end he dies. So... I guess this is what I could expect from a French film about death. It's really plodding and pretty heavy and there's no joy or fun at all. I'm sure these conversations on the nature of death and the human experience hold deep symbolism and if I remember correctly this was a deeply personal movie for Truffaut to make... but you know as a consumer experience there was not that much fun to be had. This is definitely a film I'm happier to have seen it than to see. I still love Truffaut though and seeing him on screen and reading his frequent collaborators' names in the credits makes me want to revisit the films of his I really love. Maybe someday. Next up is a movie with a confusing title.