The enthusiasm of a young critic

John Osborne

FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT: LETTERS edited by Gilles Jacob and Claude Givray Faber, £17.50, pp.589 As I was picking my way through these confusingly edited letters, I read the dismal news that the post of theatre critic of the Times is to be assumed shortly by an East Coast University 'Professor' of Drama. He joins the list of pushy nonentities, like the present incumbent of the Daily Telegraph (from the plum pastures of the Arts Coun- cil) and the feeble tipster of this very journal, who contribute — albeit peripher- ally — to the tedious hindrance of a traditionally hazardous and anarchic pro- fession.

The film critics of Cahiers du Cinema, or at least a few of them (Truffaut being the most distinguished), made some sense of what seemed at that time a very Gallic, nit-picking and cliquish exercise in and academic body-building. This gymnasium, indeed, served for the work-outs of those cineastes who intended eventually to prove themselves in the field and in competition. In England, Sight and Sound, with its solemn acres of frame-by-frame exegeses of Welles's or Losey's mirror tricks, read pathologist's report from the incar- ceration of the cutting room. It spawned forth 'Free Cinema' and impatient advo- cates like Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson. However, these were unclubbable, natural dissidents, suspicious of theory and far less concerted in their enthusiasms than the Ecole across the Water. It is significant that when Truffaut became a full-time film-maker himself he ceased to comment publicly on his colleagues. It seems to me that the only justification for anyone to spend their days peering into the darkness at the hopeful endeavours of others is either to encapsulate them forever for the delight and envy of posterity (Hazlett, Shaw, Max Beerbohm) or as a temporary discipline embarked upon as a course of self-instruction before taking some part in whatever art has aroused this morbid scrutiny. Enthusiasm is the nose of this form of athletics. Without it, criticism is no more than a soft job for immodest eunuchs hot for a cushy, pensionable sine- cure. Kenneth Tynan had it, enthusiasm that is. Rather, he had them plurally, in breathless outbursts: Marxism, Zen, bull- fighting, various stars. He was stage- struck as racing correspondents are horse- struck. All most critics seem to be struck with are outlandish disfigurements and personal handicaps like deafness, delayed acne and surgical boots. Tynan sensibly left the job when his virulent enthusiasm had done its work. To sit uninterruptedly through 20 years of theatre or cinema is not a sign of passion but of torpor. To walk out is a mark of involvement. To sit it out is merely to join the doleful company of zombie scribblers.

I describe the editing of this book as confusing because the letters have been arranged chronologically in annual instal- ments, each one accompanied by a be- wildering appendix of notes explaining the identity of friends, lovers, colleagues, academics, critics, distributors, camera- men, actors, literary figures, past and present, place-names and so on. The trail- back of personalities and information tends to lead, unless one keeps one's eye fiercely on the narrative road, to a feeling of being in what would nowadays be impeccably described as a `contraflow situation'.

Truffaut's letters to his lifelong friend, Robert Lachenay, which are the spine of this book, are endearing, importunate, sweet-natured, infectious in their energy and outgoing, curious and, yes, young critic, enthusiastic, The voracious appetite for books and films is undiminished from earliest idle teenage until the frantic enter- prise of middle years. 'You who enjoy writing so much, tell me about your mis- adventures since 22 October 1950,' writes Robert, surely expectant of a return tide of detailed exhilaration. Books and more books, from Balzac, Proust and Verlaine, through Dorian Gray to modern pulp; lesser stars like Susan Hayward and Richard Conte (two of my own teenage favourites) to Cocteau, La Regle du Jeu and Anna Neagle are all crammed into the overladen grasp of 'dear old Robert' like an assault from a drunken Santa Claus dishing out goodies from his epistolary `Happy Christmas, shipmates!' bran-tub. Truffaut's lame contrition over having nicked dear old Robert's books and sold them in his absence is one of the funniest and most characteristic episodes in the book.

Similarly, his critical prejudices are sparklingly clear and unhedged by the pussy-footing of 'balanced' judgment. He dislikes a Bunuel film because it is simply `badly acted and that's all there is to it,' which does not prevent him from admiring the revered man's Archibaldo. And 'I like Gervaise because she makes me cry' and Bergman's Summer with Monika because `it's the film every director ought to make when he's twenty.' This is the working insight of the practitioner-to-be, not the moribund pathologist-academic.

In Anglo-Saxon circles, Cahiers du Cine- ma was often regarded as a fearsome spearhead of spiteful French intellectual- ism. Its brightest star had none of the myopic stupidity associated with such fac- tions.

Basically, I am very uninformed, very un- educated. I am not proud of the fact; I just have the good fortune to be blessed with a slight sense of and love for the cinema. That's all. That aside, any attempt at analysis in greater depth goes over my poor head.. . As I hate the fact that I am self-taught, 1 try to learn nothing, or almost nothing; my salvation will be that I 'specialised' very early on in the cinema.

Allowing for Truffaut's bubbling gift of play-acting, that is surely a cheery note, deserving to be slipped underneath a few critical doors.

A magnanimous frankness prevails throughout these letters. Even when 'dear old Robert's' grandmother and mother accuse his prodigally affectionate friend of homosexual inclinations, he responds with almost absent-minded forgiveness, concen- trating on what parcels of books, lists, clothes and money he is intent on sending or receiving.

Truffaut's briefs to screenwriters are succinct, modest and quite specific, unlike the plundering process of attrition other directors inflict on their trapped victims. Writing to Maurice Pons, author of the delightful Les Mistons , he says warningly: I increasingly guess how painful it must be to feel one has been adapted, which is to say,

betrayed. I say all this to temper your disappointment when you see the film!

Such sensibility would be laughable to the front-office oilmen who buy writers like fax-paper.

To Marcel Moussy, co-adaptor of Les Quatre Cent Coups and Tirez sur le Pianiste, he writes:

My wife embraces yours, while I shake your hand in a very manly fashion, with all that such a gesture, given the circumstances, entails in gratitude and affection; and I also take this opportunity of suggesting that as soon as you have finished the dialogue we address each other as tu, to make it easier for each of us to bawl the other out.

Blimey, Nymie.