Claude Jade, you said the script you read was different from the film.
- What do you mean by that? - That a lot of changes were made.
And you mustn't forget that the film was shot quickly.
If you remember, at that time, François was busy defending Henri Langlois
regarding the Cinémathèque matter.
Malraux wanted to fire Langlois. François found that unacceptable.
As a result, François was...
I won't say he wasn't around during the shoot,
but he'd turn up late, he wouldn't attend the rushes.
So the fact that the film was made at all was something of a miracle.
- The film was a sideline? - Absolutely.
I remember him telling me he wished the film were like Trenet's song.
After all, Que reste t'il de nos amours is Trenet's song
as well as the theme song.
So, the film was dedicated to Henri Langlois.
So, it was shot in February '68, since that's when all this took place.
A few months before May '68.
(John-Bandit was already there, taking part in pro-Langlois demonstrations.
Here's the first scene, illustrating the closure of the Cinémathèque.
And Trenet's song.
Chaillot's Cinémathèque, which was temporarily closed.
Claude de Givray, the film will start with a shot of the Eiffel Tower.
Truffaut is a bit obsessed with it.
- It's in The 400 Blows. - The first short film he wanted to do
was with Raymond Devos, about a farmer who came to Paris
and kept looking for the Eiffel Tower but could never find it.
That allowed him to film the Eiffel Tower from afar,
with houses in the foreground, but he never used the footage.
It's a bit of an obsession of his, and it crops up quite a bit.
The Eiffel Tower is rarely...
What time is it?
Ten to 4:00.
What time is it now?
Nine to 4:00.
Up yours, queer!
Eight to 4:00.
- Here we're in a... - A military jail.
Military jail. We know that Truffaut went through that.
Were you aware that he'd been in a military jail in Germany?
Yes, because he'd volunteered after a woman broke his heart.
He'd enlisted and would have gone to Indochina.
But he went to study in Germany,
and that's where his rebellious streak emerged.
He found the army,
having to polish floors, incredibly stupid.
Truffaut's friends, at the time, were Andre' Bazin...
That's right, Andre' Bazin is the one who got him out of there.
He was in a military hospital and was in a very bad position.
He'd already spent his enlistment pay.
And you think, "Ah, I feel something hard!"
That's what your girl says when you're home on leave.
Well, mines are like dames.
You have to go gently.
With a girl, you don't feel her ass right away.
Many people remember this kind of thing happening in the army.
The vulgarity of the instructors.
They feel obliged to be macho, making vulgar sexual references.
So they declared him unfit for service.
And Bazin, as well as Mauriac and Jean Genet, at one stage...
Jean Genet corresponded with Truffaut around that time.
There was also a relative of Doniol-Valcroze, who was president of the Senate.
- That's it, yes. - Friends intervened to help Truffaut.
That's it, but it was really Bazin who took charge.
- In fact, he moved in with Bazin. - In '53.
Yes, he moved in with him.
I had personal reasons.
Here, they're referring to the fact that François enlisted voluntarily.
What's more, you've spent your enlistment bonus.
They should make you give it back.
I would.
You must have pull. Communist friends.
This man tells him he's unfit for service
because he has communist friends.
It's true that in '52, '53, many partisans had joined the army,
so communists could be influential.
Not to mention the war in Indochina.
- In '68. - By '68, it was all over.
But François kept it.
Honourable discharge denied by order of the General himself.
Which means
you can never work for the government
or any respectable company.
You can always peddle ties...
But I doubt that you'll sell many.
Good luck. I hope we never meet again.
Dismissed!
So, for those who are nostalgic, here are some platform buses.
Which were...
They were filming in his childhood neighbourhood.
This was set in Place de Clichy.
This woman, who runs the hotel,
can be seen again in Bed and Board,
as the mother of the tittie violinist.
In fact, Christine Darbon's house in the film is actually her residence.
Not me!
These are brilliant touches, in terms of direction,
to have people whistling during awkward scenes.
He has to wait for the girl to undress, so he looks foolish.
So by making him whistle... François used to whistle, too.
Don't! I've got spray on.
I'll keep it on. I've got a cold.
Come here. I'll wash you.
Where are you going?
I'm always at the Balto.
He avoids the scene we're expecting.
Yes, but then there'll be another one.
How can you explain that he...
What amused him were his army pals saying, "He'll get laid for us."
Those comments amused him. "Have a shag for us."
He always has staircases, with women's legs going up them.
The expectation of pleasure is already a form of pleasure, if not more.
That was the theory.
We all agreed that our best moment was our first glimpse of leg.
So now he goes back home.
It's the same apartment he was in in Antoine and Colette.
He goes back to that room, yes.
Take a look at the props. That's a picture of my son, who will...
And next to it there's a picture of me.
...who will act in Small Change.
Truffaut was my son's godfather.
He loved the picture because my son wasn't smiling.
He was very young, and very solemn.
He adored pictures of solemn children.
It wasn't that the picture was of his godson, but that it was solemn.
And here's Christine's house. I believe it's been knocked down since.
I came and visited you there. It was very beautiful.
François paid great attention to the choice of location.
He would ask his assistants or his trainees
to seek out locations that almost resembled sets.
Take Two English Girls, which...
And so here we find, as in Love at Twenty,
the mother and the stepfather.
The mother is Claire Duhamel.
Her brother-in-law composed the music for the film.
And the stepfather is Daniel Ceccaldi, with whom he'd shot The Soft Skin.
Because François does this a lot.
Antoine Doinel is often closer to the parents of his girlfriend
than the girlfriend herself, with whom he's got problems.
And there's your picture, as Christine, in the background.
And you're not there.
It was often like that. The screenplays were 80 to 100 pages long.
And it was as if they were merely reminders.
He merely jotted down what he was afraid of forgetting.
As long as each scene had a beginning, a middle and an end,
he knew how to manage the actors and what the dialogue would be.
So they contained the basic dialogue, the links between scenes,
but he preferred to discuss the rest with the actors.
As we can see in Day for Night,
he liked to write the dialogue the night before a shoot.
- Or even five minutes before. - Since he was quite shy,
he preferred not to have to talk to the actors too much before a shoot.
So he spoke to them during filming instead.
Andre' Falcon would panic. As part of the Comédie-Française,
he was used to receiving his scripts well in advance.
It's Mr Shapiro.
I heard you mention Christine. What did you tell him?
The truth.
What should I tell him?
That's all right.
The lunches and dinners he portrays are always very ordinary.
François wasn't very interested in food.
Go ahead. Being a night watchman isn't bad.
You have time to read.
And Shapiro is a nice guy.
I'll tell Christine you're back.
That was my very first day of filming on Stolen Kisses.
- You really appear. - I really appear.
It was the first film I ever did.
So that really is the first time you appear.
How did François go about offering you the role?
At the time, I was working in theatre
and was in a play by Pirandello.
Sacha Pitoëff had recreated his father's staging for this production.
And I remember that, after the dress rehearsal,
the Pitoëff were thrilled because François had sent them a letter
telling them he'd loved the show and that it was brilliant.
And they were extremely pleased.
So that's how I knew that Truffaut had been to the dress rehearsal.
- And then... - I was with him.
- You were with him? - Yes, he loved going to the theatre.
He never went backstage.
He liked to observe actors without being seen.
So, I remember that he was there
and liked taking friends along.
I know that the moment he saw you, Claude Jade,
wearing a lovely dress from 1925 or 1930,
he said, "Here's Danielle Darrieux."
That was rather flattering.
He was so pleased with it, and this was just two months before shooting,
that he also engaged Harry-Max.
No, Harry-Max wasn't in the play.
- Are you sure? - Absolutely.
- Was Andre' Falcon in it? - Yes.
- So he engaged Andre' Falcon. - Wasn't Harry-Max in the company?
Harry-Max had worked with us, yes, but wasn't in this play.
And Truffaut came several times, incognito,
to watch Andre' Falcon, to watch me, and so on.
So here's the Hotel Alsina on Avenue Junot.
- It's still there, as far as I know. - The decor was well chosen.
It's a clever decor. It could have been in a film by Rohmer.
So here's Harry-Max, arriving.
- And Jacques Rispal? - Who is also in Bed and Board.
The neighbour who...
- So this scene, Claude de Givray... - This is what happened.
It was fun to work with Duchenne, the manager of the detective agency.
We got him involved.
We told him we had someone playing a night watchman
and wanted to show how he becomes a sleuth.
But we wanted it to be acted out.
So he finally admitted, seeing that it was relevant,
that he filed false adultery reports...
They're not allowed to file adultery reports, the police must do it.
But if the husband came along and smashed everything up,
then the police would be called in to deal with the uproar...
- Disturbing the peace. - Disturbing the peace, or whatever,
and at that point, supposing custody of the children is involved,
there isn't an adultery report, but there's a statement
to the effect that a man had smashed the place up
because he'd found his wife in bed with another man.
Your husband?
None of my business.
Julien! This is too much!
My mother was right! You're pathetic!
Hopeless!
Just look at yourself...
No, no... Not that way!
What's the point?
We've got to be noisy. Now, go on!
You're crazy!
Not the flowers! The vase!
That's great! Keep it up!
Go call the police.
He's breaking everything! He's crazy!
Call the cops!
Say it's an emergency!
Interpreting the world of the detective is so important.
François Truffaut drew a lot from... He cut various stories together.
The scenes with the detective were just rough sketches to begin with.
They were heavily rewritten.
The investigators filled in the details. They told us about their clever tricks.
They were a mine of information.
There's one of the details.
The banknote.
The detective is hoping for his complicity.
Keep it.
What's going on?
A man just found his wife...
The lady in Room 24 was with Room 19.
You let him in!
He told me to hurry.
You're a private detective! Get out of here!
He can see what's going on.
You, too!
Here's your bonus.
Since the private detective is responsible for Jean-Pierre being fired,
he obviously owes him something.
So he'll offer Jean-Pierre, as unlikely as it may seem,
a job as a private detective.
But the idea amused us.
I just ordered.
You pulled a fast one!
Are you a private detective?
I've been with the Blady Agency for 30 years.
Obviously, the film was good publicity for his agency.
He was asked to do a lot of work of that kind as a result.
- Truffaut himself used the agency. - Later on, he called them in.
To investigate something to do with his real father.
Something we did with François, what interested him,
was document after document after document.
And sometimes we added very little dramatisation,
because he preferred to stick to the documents.
I can't now remember at what point, during our meetings,
we decided that Léaud, having left the army,
would become a night watchman, which seemed an obvious job
to fall into when you have no other experience.
And then we decided we'd have to find him something more interesting to do.
Then we hit on the amusing idea of him becoming a private detective.
Then, with Bernard Revon,
I interviewed the manager of this agency in St-Lazare for 12 hours.
So then we decoded these interviews. A secretary would type them out.
François would read the interviews,
and then we'd suggest ways of dramatising them.
And he'd sometimes scribble in the margins, "Ruined."
Because he felt that we'd ruined things by over-dramatising them.
It's quite revealing in terms of how he used reality.
It's amusing because there are quite a few scenes by Woody Allen
- that were filmed that way. - Through windows.
François was probably not the first to think of that. It reminds me a lot of Annie Hall.
And here, you get that "eureka" moment.
You can suddenly see him thinking, "Well, why not?"
It's like the first scene you appear in.
The dialogue is suggested by gestures.
The first time he shadows someone.
The woman being followed is Pascale Dauman.
Exactly.
Pascale Dauman was a cinema lover, distributor, producer.
You raised doubts about Jean-Pierre Léaud as a detective.
He looks like a bit of a clown.
- Absolutely. - He's not very believable.
I think that was Revon's idea.
As Revon didn't know as much about it, I'd have told them it's not possible.
But François liked it because it dramatised reality.
It does happen, normal people doing unusual things.
- Here's Serge Rousseau. - Yes, that's it.
The man in the raincoat tailing Christine.
- Totally enigmatic. - Quite.
We were a bit unsure because we felt it smacked too much of a thriller.
- With that raincoat. - Yes, he could be a sex maniac.
We were a bit naive. We tried to incorporate his character
by suggesting he was just a neighbour.
But François wanted him to come out of nowhere, so to speak,
and tell things as they are.
Which is wonderful because we leave the story to give it a little...
A shift, a kind of reflection on adolescence.
This scene was completely improvised.
- For you. - For me.
You don't know. You're really trying to work out...
- A newsboy? - Better than that.
- A porter at Orly? - That takes pull.
- A painter? - That takes talent.
It amuses me because my voice has changed so much since then.
Yes, you sound really young.
It's a good job. I saw one on TV.
No. Less tiring.
There were several characters in the first screenplay I read.
There were lots of young people and Christine was just another friend.
It was only later that François decided to concentrate on Christine,
make her a more central character, and I was delighted.
And it's amusing that she's called Christine Darbon
because in Love at Twenty,
in the "Antoine and Colette" segment,
the actor who played the father of Marie-France Pisier
was François Darbon, who reappears in Stolen Kisses
as the officer who throws him out of the army.
The “vous“ form of address between them
seems so old-fashioned.
François always said "vous" to begin with.
It's true that these two are pals, they've known each other a while,
so it's a bit stylised, it's reminiscent of Cocteau.
This is the scene that recurs in all the films with Doinel.
What do you mean?
The scene in the cellar, with the kiss.
The stolen kiss.
I'll make you sing.
I'm no canary.
I object, Your Honour.
Anything you say may be held against you.
Catherine, you did a good job in London.
But why all that room service?
The London Hilton is at an angle.
So here, Claude de Givray, you looked into...
- Did you attend similar meetings? - Yes, absolutely.
We knew all about his personnel. Meetings were on Fridays at 11:00.
Everyone tells...
He sat in a corner and at the end, everyone asked him what he thought.
We'll drop it. I have a hunch.
I think her boss made it all up.
He's in love with her...
90% of Duchenne's work as a detective
had to do with adultery.
But he was proud to have solved a certain number of cases.
And he kept saying, "I'm at the heart of the human heart."
And we put that in the dialogue. You hear it several times.
...In the attic of the Ministry.
Hanging doesn't make your brains splatter.
With the belt of his bathrobe.
And François had never been to his office,
which was decorated in the Empire style.
We asked him.
He said he'd done it this way because it was a military style
and so it gave him credibility,
as a private detective, to have an Empire-style office.
So François' set designer reproduced that idea.
- Here's a client. - This is a true story.
A bit stylised, because...
How did François Truffaut stylise scenes?
He changed the man's profession. We see, later, that he's a cabaret artist.
He performed at the Cheval d'Or.
It's about a friend who lived with me.
A month ago, he disappeared.
He left some things and I'd like to return them.
You want his address?
Yes, but not only that.
I'd like to know how he lives.
There's the glove and then the ring...
I understand. We'll find his address,
tail him,
and investigate.
It will cost you 300 francs a day.
Fine. Will it take...
very long?
It depends on whether your friend,
the gentleman,
is hard to find or not.
What is his profession?
He's a magician.
He does an act with coloured cords.
I always do the puzzle.
And I'm surprised, because it looks so good on television.
It's a very good print. And it's staged very well.
It didn't strike me as much when I first saw it on the big screen.
There's an element of Hitchcock, with the man's hands and so on.
In this scene, not only has reality been altered,
but there's also been an exercise in style.
The movement of the camera is very limpid,
and it's well framed.
He's amazing.
He's in a state of grace.
He's applied all his theories and they work.
This sequence is quite long
because he'd explained all sorts of things,
how one pretends to find an umbrella so as to obtain someone's address
when you can barely describe them.
One version of Stolen Kisses lasted one hour and 45 minutes.
So François turned this into a series of flashes
and said a film like this shouldn't last over one hour and 27 minutes.
He realised that it was a film in the manner of Lubitsch
and that you can't go on too long in such cases.
So he edited the scenes down sharply but kept them because they were fun.
- The details, the tricks of the trade... - So he skims through them.
So he did this because he wanted to keep the bits that were fun.
Here all you see are the white gloves.
Shall I come tonight?
No. I said Saturday. Or never, if that doesn't suit you.
And here, he's thrown in a little subplot,
as if it were a television series.
You look upset. What's wrong?
Catherine is impossible!
She refuses to get married!
I've been after my girl for two years, and I know it won't work.
Why not get yourself a whore?
They're too filthy.
At your age, I ate French fries in the street
and laid slobs who used safety pins on their bras.
This happens a lot in Truffaut's films.
In Shoot the Pianist, there is also this complicity between men
as they discuss women, but it's never vulgar.
Women need to be conquered.
Yes, there's the frustration...
I mean a tall, tall girl.
When you go out, if she's too...
Yes, there's the whole issue of sexual frustration.
- But devoid of misogyny. - This is a nice touch.
- She's so tall! - I think it was a sentence by Pierre Gramblin.
Because one day, François himself said,
"I'm going outwith a girl who's a foot taller than me."
And Pierre replied, "Try to look very professional."
Don't you find Diberti's influence very strong when it comes to women?
- It's very noticeable in the dialogue. - When it comes to Marie Dubois.
She played both the ideal woman and the prostitute.
Marie Dubois was a magnificent book.
He says outright in Shoot the Pianist that women are magical.
...and I laid her on the floor.
If anybody had found us, it would have seemed monstrous.
Yet, to make love is a way of compensating for death,
of proving you exist.
Christine will be here soon.
Are you going to an early show?
No, we're going to a nightclub for a case I'm on.
It must be fascinating!
It is. For instance, today,
a woman asked us to find out
why her twin babies seemed so pale
when their nursemaid takes them out for fresh air every day.
Since she goes to work, she can't follow the nurse.
Well, they had me tail her,
and this afternoon,
I waited in front of her apartment house.
The nurse came out with the twins.
She took them to a little park...
In a way, this character is almost a screenwriter, wouldn't you agree?
He's a bit of a screenwriter in the film, since he tells stories.
Absolutely.
Truffaut thought it would be more interesting,
rather than showing the scene with secondary characters,
to have him tell it.
And the story of the children
spending the day in the concierge's lodge...
She took off her uniform
and did things with the baby's bottle.
Don't you feel Guitry's influence here?
His way of speaking, of gesticulating. His way of telling a story.
But that's also Jean-Pierre's manner.
It's a strange mixture, because François also acts like this.
- Yes, he was... - Sometimes you no longer knew...
Obviously, it was François who gave Jean-Pierre directions,
but after a while, François incorporated things
that Jean-Pierre had improvised, because he was so spontaneous.
Call him. We have his phone number.
And what do I say?
"Give me your address so I can send you flowers."
You've got his phone number but not his address?
Langman, 525-5573.
So that was Claude Berri's phone number.
- Quite. - That's it.
Yes, Truffaut was paying homage to Claude Berri.
He'd loved The Two of Us.
Not to mention that Claude Berri saw the rough cut of this film.
- Of Stolen Kisses? - And advised him to make some edits.
François told me, "I've been defeated. I love things to be elliptical," like Lubitsch,
and Claude Berri went beyond the ellipses that Truffaut used,
and suggested going from one scene to another by cutting out yet another.
One of the tricks of the trade.
Are we going to the movies?
No, I've got to go to a nightclub. On a case.
It's a nice place. There's a show.
Do you mind?
No. If it's light, you'll behave better than at the movies
and I'll have some peace.
This is the scene in the cabaret where he was conducting his investigation
on the missing man who is performing his rather delightful act.
So he's working there, while you're having an evening out.
And the clever thing is that the homosexual man's friend
has a fun job.
This act was on at the Cheval d'Or. This was a real act.
We can imagine Truffaut attending similar performances in his youth.
- There's a magical side. - This was on at the Cheval d'Or.
- Where's the Cheval d'Or? - Oh, yes, sorry.
Ricet Barrier would come along.
Pierre Perret came.
Even Devos came, mainly to test his new jokes.
It was something they did at Rue Mouffetard.
They must have had 60 seats. It was very charming.
And this scene works brilliantly
since we have a cabaret act which is interesting in itself,
we have two people flirting,
and to top it all, we have an investigation in progress.
He'd pretend not to see us,
but we saw him
under the moon of June.
He'd roll up the gold cord and put it down.
Then, as if he were performing a sacred ritual,
as if he were seeking... Who knows?
A lost science...
Slowly, we'd see him knot the blue cord,
wind it around his hand,
and the knots would go from the blue cord
all by themselves.
I saw this act.
I saw Pierre Étaix at the Cheval d'Or.
- They had a great act. - Did Claude Vega perform there?
No, he never performed at the Cheval d'Or.
Pierre Étaix act was to set up the mic. He'd turn up and the mic didn't work.
...to the gold.
Then back again,
to the blue.
Once again the knots would go from the blue cord
to the gold cord.
Excuse me. I've got to go. It's for my job.
Here he's behaving like a boor, abandoning her there like that.
- Yes, you're right. - It's a necessity in this job.
We had this at the beginning, and now in the middle.
He'd prepare this in advance.
That was the same coat as François'.
- Yes, it was François' coat. - That's how Truffaut dressed.
That's his outfit. Without the cap, perhaps.
He sometimes wore a cap when it was cold,
but in those cases, he was more likely to wear it with a jacket.
The resemblance is striking.
People often thought Jean-Pierre was his son.
Here's the meeting with Marie-France Pisier and Jean-François Adam.
- Yes, it was an allusion to... - To Love at Twenty.
In Love at Twenty, Jean-François Adam was François' assistant.
He was a stage director and he committed suicide.
He was married to Brigitte Fossey.
- And he committed suicide. - Did he do any good films?
- Yes, he did.
See you soon.
We'll see Marie-France again in Love on the Run.
What I love about Truffaut's films is the awkwardness of his men at work.
- How do you explain it? - He liked making fun of them.
I hope you're not mad. It was for my job.
I had to tail a guy.
You know, the magician. You're not angry?
No. You detectives...
You say that. But you sound...
A little resentful.
No. Not at all.
We could go out tonight, or do something. I'd like to.
So would I. But I'm a little tired.
I went to the demonstration.
He's talking about demonstrations before May '68,
all because of the Cinémathèque affair.
She got hit.
This is someone no one has ever seen and no one will ever see.
Don't cut us off, miss!
I can't hear you, Christine.
Something's wrong with this line.
Don't you put that dirty paper on my windshield!
- And we always have... - He's a bit of a rascal.
Traffic wardens play an important role in François' films.
He didn't see him go past.
"6:55, they close the post office."
"6:58, the subject has not reappeared."
"7:04, operation suspended."
According to this,
the subject spent the night in the post office!
You must be kidding!
I lost him.
The magician made himself disappear!
What kind of club does he work at?
Kind of an arty place,
with candles on the tables and Vivaldi in the toilets.
What statue are you referring to?
He makes all his appointments at a statue of Joan of Arc.
An equestrian statue?
Mr Tabard is here.
Show him in.
I'm sure the magician spotted you.
I'll have to put someone else on it
I don't know what to do with you. You're certainly willing,
but you discourage me.
You can leave now.
- How did this come about? - It's still thanks to Duchenne.
Duchenne spent 80 to 90% of his time dealing with adultery reports,
but he said people asked him to investigate their own lives.
For instance, managers who wanted to know
how they were perceived by their employees.
Sometimes, they wanted to see if their employees were stealing from them.
So, naturally, we became interested and told François.
This was an investigation into his own life.
And so we decided to cover the subject.
And so this brought us on to...
- The character of Mrs Tabard. - Played by Delphine Seyrig.
And here, too, that awkwardness. Since...
Of course, it was Hobson's choice.
He pretends to be running an exam to hire people.
The theme being, "gift-wrapping nicely,"
and Jean-Pierre Léaud prepares the ugliest packet...
- And he gets hired. - He's hired because he's a detective.
He's hired because he's a detective.
What I love is the fact that Lonsdale is so smug and arrogant.
He's brilliant in this role.
He had already acted in The Bride Wore Black,
- which was shot just before this. - Absolutely.
He'd also performed in the theatre with Delphine Seyrig.
- He played a politician. - Yes, he played a politician.
"When she takes me in her arms," he'd say,
"I feel as though I were taking France in my arms."
But I can't waste time telling my life story on a couch!
I'm not a mamma's boy!
And my store keeps me busy.
A shoe salesman's work is never done!
If you feel everyone hates you, it may be
that you look down on people.
Oh, no! Certainly not!
This scene could be taking place at a doctor's, a psychologists.
This man is unburdening himself
and the agency's manager is trying to prescribe a cure.
That's a good description. It allowed François...
The strength of his films resides in his characters.
His characters, compared to those of most French filmmakers,
are magnificent.
That allows one to portray a character to the full.
There's an inquiry, which allows the character to tell his story.
It isn't pure mockery.
Most French filmmakers would have...
He is a bit square, but...
François loved comedians and is great at showcasing Lonsdale's talent.
The dialogue is perfect for him.
He wrote for Denner, as well.
He didn't give them too many stage directions.
He was particularly good at writing for you.
Yes, perhaps he got better at it later, after Stolen Kisses.
- His forte was above all... - But he also had very definite ideas.
I'll show you.
Send Doinel in.
Right away, sir. Antoine, Mr Blady calls for you.
He said right away.
It could be a press office. It's very lively.
- It's a storyboard setting. - Absolutely.
- He loved... - These lively characters.
It's like the courtyard in Bed and Board.
So many characters like this.
You can leave us now, Doinel.
I remember that we'd received, while working on a film that never got made,
a postcard from America, which read,
"Don't do a scene to slot in a detail, but put 10 details into a scene."
No one must suspect you know each other.
When you're scripting something,
you must always find a trick for it to seem realistic.
François' films always seem unscripted,
whereas, in fact, they are like plays.
I remember that, later on, people presented me with screenplays
saying, "You'll like this, it's very Truffaut."
I'd reply, "You don't understand. Truffaut always over-dramatised."
But he didn't go in for long sequences that would last the whole film.
His manner is rather similar to Lubitsch.
How does one make a scene interesting?
François never puts in transitional scenes, he prefers to rely on details.
Here's the perfect example, with the packets.
- That's it. - Exactly.
We'll hire him.
Here's someone else of whom we'll see more.
He's almost like that in real life.
- Jacques Robiolles. - He's almost like that in real life.
But it's also very characteristic of that era.
He was both a student and...
He was a single father. He didn't know how to look after his child.
He was also in Antoine and Colette, wasn't he?
I don't know. I don't think so.
Yes, he was. He kept asking for money.
- No, that was in Bed and Board. - It was brilliant.
- It was a joke. - I must be getting muddled.
It's the kind of joke François adored.
So we went to Jourdan to see what life was like in a shoe shop.
- This was shot at Mara/ex, in Passy. - That's right.
Because Revon had expensive tastes, we went to Jourdan during the research.
They told us all the technical terms.
He was right, but I still can't understand
his line of reasoning.
François, at some point, decided to include something about a tie.
Delphine Seyrig has to go to another shop to buy a tie for Jean-Pierre,
"and we thought," if she has a shop with shirts, shoes, ties and so on,
"it'll be more meaningful if she goes elsewhere to buy a tie."
"It'll suggest something is going on between them."
And François said, "No, I want a shop where they only sell one thing."
- Shoes. - Obviously.
See? It's more unified that way.
Otherwise it's a shop that sells shirts, ties, underpants...
This gives more synthesis, a sense of civilisation.
- Suspense. - Yes, but for no reason.
That's what's so brilliant about it. He manages to create suspense...
- When nothing's really happening. - It's like recycling Hitchcock.
In a film by Lubitsch.
It leads up to the moment she appears.
It casts a spell on him.
She was so beautiful.
She was magnificent.
It was a tiny set, and he manages to make it seem...
And then she appears to him, like a vision.
Even the music, it's very dreamy.
It's like Cocteau, it elicits thoughts which are very...
- Yes, yes. - She's like a fairy.
You shouldn't be here.
The store is closed. If all the customers did that...
They'd all be Fabienne Tabard.
I'm the boss's wife.
Oh, I apologise.
It's all right. You only do your job.
You're the new boy?
How was this character constructed?
Did he give you any instructions?
Did something similar happen to François?
- Don't forget The Lily of the Valley. - You're absolutely right.
Because later, they even quote from the book.
And it's the book he was reading in jail.
All of a sudden...
All of a sudden, Doinel becomes the protagonist from The Lily of the Valley.
And she becomes the married woman Balzac was in love with.
He always pays tribute to Balzac.
If you remember, in The 400 Blows,
a hotel was almost dedicated to Balzac.
I don't understand.
François had problems with English, too.
But it was also done to showcase her.
She'd filmed in England and spoke very good English.
His choice of Delphine Seyrig, what does that...
She didn't want to take this role, but I begged her.
She wanted lots of money. Her agent wanted lots of money.
She wanted to refuse but I said, "No, it must be Delphine Seyrig."
- Because she is so beautiful... - Her voice is magnificent.
- Her figure, also. - Think of Marienbad...
That's what's so brilliant, to be able to do that in a shoe shop.
That's what I love so much, a romantic drama set in a shoe shop.
- It was Christine... - Christine Pellé.
François' script assistant.
The employees call Mr Tabard "the dinosaur".
I met Mrs Tabard.
Her voice is enchanting, and she speaks English.
Describe her.
She's superb!
A little vague and very gentle.
She has an adorable turned-up nose.
So matter-of-fact.
- She's asking all the usual questions. - And his replies are poetic.
Yes, that's good.
...slightly triangular.
Luminous skin,
lit up from within.
We want a report, not a declaration of love!
There were scenes like this in The Man Who Loved Women.
And he's learning English.
In those days, François was taking English lessons.
He had a record and everything.
The Teppaz record player. That's in Antoine and Colette...
Yes, he had one at home. He'd listen to it in the bathroom.
Maralex, that's what you were saying earlier.
The shop still exists.
They mainly sell children's shoes.
Another allusion.
Laurel and Hardy, who can also be found in Bed and Board,
under a different guise.
These silent scenes are very expressive.
What do you mean, hounding me at the store?
It was so cold we could barely speak.
Avenue de Breteuil, the cold was awful.
I don't know whether he was influenced by Henry James.
It was exactly this kind of... Later, he was always doing things like this.
She's the last person he wants to see turn up as he's falling in love with...
Here's Serge Rousseau, behind them.
He takes her to task about her intentions.
They're having a domestic dispute before even becoming a couple.
The thing is that he's feeling guilty.
- Did you write that, or not? - That's what I thought then.
But love and friendship call for admiration.
Well, I don't admire you!
- That's a low blow. - That was very harsh.
François was quite capable of dealing out low blows like that.
But he does it from guilt,
because he's already in love with Delphine Seyrig,
and she came and bothered him on the other woman's territory.
And look at this poor dear Mr Tabard.
I don't want to go alone.
Get Antoine to take you.
I wouldn't mind. I've got a real crush on him.
But he's crazy about Mrs Tabard!
The other clay, Sylvie called her "Mrs Dinosaur."
Antoine was furious! He said, "She's an exceptional woman!"
Then he said, "She is not a woman. She's an apparition!"
Haven't you noticed?
When she appears, he turns white as a sheet.
Here, it's as if he's doing some kind of psychological exercise.
He's looking at himself in the mirror and repeating names.
I don't know of any other actor who could have done this.
Yes, because you must be a bit crazy.
He does it very well.
It's a great scene.
I know that this scene was edited out in a few other countries.
It's a scene worthy of a comic actor.
All those who are condemned to death have their heads cut off.
He does it very well. He says each name differently.
He looks as if he's about to cry.
It's the perfect length.
With Godard, it would have gone on for another 10 minutes.
No, not that stack. Look in the green boxes on top.
They're empty-
Higher.
Do I have tomorrow off?
No.
Do I leave early today?
No.
Do you want to hear a story?
No.
The one about the moron who said no... Well, it's you!
Come with me.
It's like that all the time.
How's your investigation going?
I can't say. I make my report every night.
That's very true of professionals.
They only report to the boss.
So we go into the Tabards' apartment, which was, in fact, Lonsdale's.
- I never went there. - It was Lonsdale's apartment,
which had a view over the École Militaire.
It was fabulous. He still lives there.
It brings to mind François, as a young man,
when he went to eloquence classes.
- Yes, that's it. - Where one learns oratorical skills.
He'd go to... What was it called? Le Club du Faubourg.
- It was mostly people debating. - Yes, they held debates.
And that's when François realised that he was a good orator.
But in those days, he didn't just discuss films.
They debated general subjects. He was learning to be eloquent.
Yes, that's what informed his style,
especially in penning dialogue.
It felt very natural.
Dick and Janet called. I told them to call the store.
They're taking their first French lesson.
Do you speak English?
I'm studying with records, but it's not very easy.
Records are a joke!
You can only learn English in bed,
with an English girl.
It's time you got started.
I learned with an Australian.
Her husband was a house painter.
Like Hitler.
Don't ever say that!
It's slander.
Hitler was a landscape painter.
It was Robert Lachenay who told him that.
That came from Robert Lachenay.
It's a great way to illustrate the character.
What am I doing?
The one I need is in the car. Wait for me, Antoine.
I'll do it.
Are you coming?
And here's that famous slip of the tongue.
It's in the memoirs of...
François remembered it, but couldn't place it,
and while we were writing the screenplay,
some things came straight from François' life,
we read books analysing adolescent behaviour,
and we'd come across a very good book, which was 40 years old,
in which the author wrote, "A typical example of adolescent behaviour"
"can be found in the memoirs of Anatole France."
And Anatole France recalls how, one day,
he'd been so aroused by a friend of his mother's
that when she asked him whether he liked music,
he replied, "Yes, sir."
And 30 years later, she told him it was the best sign of love...
The confusion...
Exactly, the fact she'd made him so nervous was the best sign that...
And naturally, when he left, he was beside himself.
- Do you like music? - Yes, sir.
It's also a sort of pinnacle
in terms of how Léaud can interact with a woman.
Absolutely, and Marcel Mousey had done that for The 400 Blows.
François wasn't just interested in biographical material.
He also wanted to capture something revelatory
about the human race.
The significant news item.
As well as the meaningful Freudian slip.
In this case, the kid thinks that, because of his slip, she'll conclude...
Yes, he thinks he's made a mistake, whereas...
That's why she later explains the difference between tact and manners.
May I see the book, please?
No, the personnel record.
Again, the theme of investigation. He explores information in detail.
Yes, the professional angle.
- She's able to use the roster... - To find out his address.
That way, it won't be left up to chance.
- He also avoids dialogue that way. - The screenplay is very well-crafted.
He softens things later, but...
There aren't many blind alleys.
Give me a word to use in place of "say."
There's never just a single scene.
The character returns...
- There's a dramatic construction. - Flawless.
They knew how to knit the plot lines together.
And all the characters are so real.
And yet, here, they're almost layered.
We've just seen her
and there's that other character who wants to know where his partner is.
I saw her buying three ties at Cardin's. Tabard doesn't wear them.
That's right. He wears bow ties.
I'm going to ask Mr Blady to put me on another case!
There's an issue with continuity here,
but when we mentioned it, François said no one would notice.
We mostly see him wearing bow ties.
- From the very beginning? - Yes, but it's no big deal.
At what point did Truffaut ask you to collaborate on the screenplay?
After The 400 Blows, François made a half-hour-long sequel
about Léaud's adventures.
Antoine and Colette?
Once he'd finished that, he almost regretted doing it,
because he realised he had further material to complete Doinel's story.
And then one day, he decided to make a sequel to Antoine and Colette.
And he told us three things,
that Jean-Pierre Léaud was returning from military service,
that the film would be called Stolen Kisses...
"Naturally, the distributors will try to tell me that"
"What Remains of Our Love? Would be better."
But he wanted Stolen Kisses.
And then there's a scene where a married woman asks Doinel if he likes music
and he gets flustered and replies, "Yes, sir."
And there will be a scene based on a true story,
about the manager of the agency not realising that the man asking about
an old friend who has disappeared is a homosexual.
And so he's happy to call the client back in a few days later to tell him
they'd tracked his friend down, and that he was married and had children.
And the man has a fit.
The manager of the agency told us this.
And that there was a dentist, on the floor above...
And since private detectives, and the women there, aren't huge,
aren't the way they are portrayed in American films,
it is the dentist who has to subdue the man who is throwing a fit.
And François wanted us to replicate the scene exactly.
He drops everything, he leaves the patient.
Then Jean-Pierre fell and the dentist felt like laughing.
No, I can't face it. He left all his things there!
You have to go somewhere.
I'll go to a hotel.
Put him in a cab and take him home.
You must be real proud of yourself.
I hope he paid in advance.
He'd told us that there were ways of discovering someone's address
when all you have is their phone number.
So for example... Do you remember?
One of the tricks, if you had the phone number but no address...
And you must bear in mind that he wasn't a cop, so he couldn't...
The person could be ex-directory...
So he'd call them, he never bottled out,
"and say," Congratulations! You've just won 40 pounds of Banania.
"Where shall I send them?"
So the person, caught unawares, would give him the address.
So François would say, "We must put this in, we must film that."
He had a very good idea of how we could use the material.
That was his great strength.
"For the past hour,"
"I've been looking at the ties,"
"which I would never dare to wear."
"This is a farewell letter."
"You are generous, and I don't deserve your generosity."
"You will never see me again. I'm quitting my job."
"I'm an impostor of the worst kind."
"I dreamed that a feeling might exist between us."
"But that is as impossible as Felix's love..."
François loved to show people
how things were done.
Pneumatic dispatch, which no longer exists, for example...
And we're going to follow it along.
Along every sewer, every street.
It's as if he wanted to record something that...
- Yes, and at the same time... - We see the route it is taking.
It's like the telegram, later on, in The Woman Next Door.
We follow the telegram being passed from one person to the next.
It's interesting, in plastic terms.
- And we learn something. - And he also knew that he could...
That it was the right moment to spread things out.
- It's Truffaut's handwriting. - He liked to send this kind of...
- Absolutely. - He'd send pneumatics.
Yes, they were speedy.
They no longer exist.
I woke you up.
I was awakened very early, too, by your letter.
She did a version where she wasn't out of breath.
Then she thought about it and said, "I've just climbed five floors."
So she played the whole scene breathlessly,
which, given her voice, makes her...
I've read The Lily Of the Valley.
- And there's that picture again. - Yes, it's still there.
But you forgot one thing.
Although Madame de Mortsauf loved Felix,
it is not a beautiful love story.
It's terribly sad, for she died
because she couldn't share her love with him.
Besides, I'm not an apparition. I'm a woman,
which is the opposite.
For example, this morning before I came,
I put some make-up on,
I powdered my nose,
I made up my eyes.
And as I came across Paris, I noticed
that all the women had done the same thing.
For their pleasure, or that of others.
You say that I'm exceptional.
It's true. I am exceptional.
Every woman is exceptional in turn.
You, over there,
you're exceptional, too.
Truffaut always gives women the advantage.
- Always, always. - They get to take the initiative.
It's a bit like in Hawks' films. Women are the driving force.
The thing is that we gave a great deal of thought to this scene.
We considered the consequences.
The problem, for François, was that if she slept with him,
it might turn into a relationship
and the story would cease to be interesting.
Nor did he want them not to sleep together.
It would have been too frustrating. We wanted them to make love.
So we hit upon the idea that she'd give herself to him just once,
- to prove to him that women... - That women?
- That women aren't exceptional. - She wants to prove to him,
for the future...
In a way, she's an erotic Samaritan.
She wants to show him what women really are about.
He's also making a significant point.
She tells him, "Each woman is exceptional in turn."
- That's it. - So there will be others.
There will be others, of course.
And here, he's the man-child.
I'm convinced that people must have gone wild over this scene,
because people I met later on, even serious-minded MDs, told me,
"You've met Delphine Seyrig. She's one of the most erotic women..."
- A scene like this, after all... - It's the ultimate fantasy.
A woman who offers herself to a man to prove that women are accessible.
She's doing him a favour.
And this poor girl who always shows up at the wrong moment.
She's really unlucky that way.
That's what's so great. François does this a lot.
He struggles to get the girl and then when she is finally interested...
This was shot a lot later.
There are leaves on the trees. We shot this in June.
He was missing a shot. He realised it at the editing stage.
But it involved quite a lot of work, because we had to recall people.
Surprise! This morning, Mrs Tabard, who never gets up before 11:00,
went out at 8:15.
I followed her to 18 Square d'Anvers,
where she stayed an hour and a half.
Then she went home.
Whose apartment did she go to?
I don't know. There are a lot of apartments.
The concierge wasn't there, but I'll go back.
I know where she was.
I have to see you alone.
Leave me with him.
I hate to bother you.
I'm the high school principal.
I need some information about one of your teachers, Miss Dupuis.
Oh, nothing important,
just some details about her life, her morals.
This, too, is very... There are three plots.
Yes, it's amazing. Jean Renoir's good.
What am I going to tell Mr Tabard?
And you can hear the rest going on in the background.
"What will Mr Tabard say?"
Not bad, huh?
What's happening?
I'll call Mr Blady.
- Where does that come from? - That's a sudden twist.
This really happened. It made a deep impression on François.
A film producer died while he was on the phone.
And so the person at the end of the line... Here you go.
Hang up. Mr Henri is dead.
It really happened to a film producer. He died while on the phone.
And a person said, "You should hang up..."
- This is Montmartre cemetery. - Where François is buried.
It was the cemetery he used when he shot his films.
Claude de Givray, when they say that Truffaut steals ideas,
it's quite true, but how does he integrate them?
He does it in such a way that it remains coherent.
- He doesn't steal just any old idea. - He chooses them?
He only takes ideas that are pertinent.
Now that we know he's buried there, that's an amazing image.
- It's full of women. - With the prostitutes.
It gives an overview.
So he takes things, but...
He takes things that are relevant to the screenplay.
Things that advance the storyline, or that...
Or that flesh out the story, give it more life.
That give the story a more dramatic depth.
That jerk!
Put your brakes on!
What are you doing now?
I'm a TV repair man.
No, no... It was my fault.
I can think of better ways to find you.
But no harm done.
Have a nice weekend.
- Don't you want to come with us? - No, I have to study.
You're too serious.
You can always call Lucienne.
I won't be lonesome. I'll watch TV.
Don't stay inside all weekend.
- Only too happy to be left alone. - And she's going to break...
It was like the story of the woman who sent herself telegrams
because she wants to have it off with the postman.
So here she'll make her television break down so that...
SOS 9999?
Could you come to 44 Ave Édouard Vaillant?
The TV doesn't work at all.
Lubitsch had this way of anticipating what someone will do next.
We know she's going to tamper with the set.
It's funnier than if we saw her doing it first
and the surprise came later.
What makes it interesting is that we think,
"The set's not working, but it's blaring away."
This bit of the screenplay is pure Lubitsch.
Breakdown service
We wonder how Doinel learnt to repair a television.
That's the whole point. He has no idea.
- Who hired him? - I don't know.
In Bed and Board... These are jobs which...
One of the problems is that François liked for men to have playful jobs,
which doesn't fit so well with Jean-Pierre Léaud.
Who took this out?
That's funny. It's like in a cab.
Please! Let me work in peace!
He's acting very professional.
- He really has... - It's in pieces.
- He's dismantled the television. - Completely.
Once again, he slows down the storyline.
That way, people can guess what's going on beforehand.
As long as the public colludes with the author,
it happily welcomes the outcome.
If things turned out differently, they wouldn't be happy.
They really want them to end up in bed together.
- So now you're engaged. - Not yet.
And here, there's the bit about the crackers.
There'd been a TV programme about tricks.
François watched everything.
You spread the butter...
So long as the butter is already soft.
- Otherwise, it doesn't work. - So this was lifted from...
Since crackers are cut in a certain way, they fit into each other.
There was a programme about these little tricks on television.
And all this was done to fill out...
To make day-to-day life interesting.
Have you got a pencil?
They've gone from using "vous" to using "tu," which is so revealing.
What's great is that he knows where the bottle opener is.
I forgot my handkerchief. Will you lend me yours?
All I've got is Kleenex.
No thanks. I never use paper!
Don't look now... There's a strange guy.
I think he's been following me.
I don't know who he is.
- Who is he? - I don't know. Here he comes.
This is a very surprising scene.
Some people told Truffaut that the character played by Serge Rousseau
was, in fact, death.
For a long time, I watched you in secret.
- Do you have an explanation? - Yes, I do.
François told me that, one day, he was sitting in a restaurant.
He was sitting at a table and there was a man sitting alone at another one.
And there was also a couple.
He observed the man looking at the couple, or rather, at the woman.
And he wondered what would happen if the man got up
and went over to declare his feelings for her in front of her partner.
That's where this scene came from.
The dialogue here resembles certain speeches
from The Last Metro.
So I feel that this kind of dialogue... I wouldn't say it's like Pirandello,
but it is the kind of thing a character would say to another in a play.
It's what an impassioned lover might say.
The great thing about it is
that it is in sharp contrast to the rest, and so lifts it out of light comedy.
It creates a different impact.
It adds dramatic depth, particularly as they've just become a couple,
and we're going to follow their progress in Bed and Board.
And the couple came together thanks to Langlois.
The film was first shown at the Cinémathèque,
and after the premiere, Langlois told Truffaut,
"We should see more of this couple."
And that's how we got together two years later, in Bed and Board.
Thank you, Claude Jade. Thank you, Claude de Givray.
Thanks to François Truffaut for making this film.
THE END