Francois Truffaut (Everett Collection / Everett Col)
The 400 Blows
(July 5, 8 p.m.) (Everett Collection / Everett Col)
Mississippi Mermaid
(July 12, 12 a.m.) (Everett Collection / Everett Col)
Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me
(July 12, 2:15 a.m.) (
)
Day For Night
(July 26, 8 p.m.) (Courtesy Everett Collection)
The Wild Child
(July 26, 12:15 a.m.) (Everett Collection / Everett Col)
The multiplexes are bursting with the usual mindless summer blockbusters featuring zombies, spandex-clad superheroes and post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Fortunately, the folks at Turner Classic Movies are offering serious movie lovers an invigorating, stay-at-home alternative: a month-long salute to the great director Francois Truffaut, a defining figure of the French New Wave. Being shown on Friday nights all through July, the series features all but two of his 21 feature films, as well as a couple of rarely seen shorts. Here’s a quick guide to some of the highlights.
Jules and Jim
(July 19, 10 p.m.)
Widely considered Truffaut’s finest achievement, this 1962 classic tracks the decades-long romantic triangle between Jeanne Moreau’s impulsive Catherine and Oskar Werner and Henri Serre as the titular college friends who both love her. A lyrical ode to obsessive love, it features the stylized techniques — including freeze frames, panning shots and voiceover narration — that would become the hallmark of the French New Wave. Moreau’s magnetic performance has become legendary.
The 400 Blows
(July 5, 8 p.m.)
Leave the “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” movie marathons to the nerds. Cineastes can feast on this all-night binge of the five semi-autobiographical films featuring Truffaut’s alter ego Antoine Doinel, memorably played by Jean-Pierre Leaud. It begins with this landmark debut feature, which won the Best Director Award at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, and continues with its sequels tracking the character’s life over the next twenty years: “Stolen Kisses” (1968), “Bed & Board” (1970), “Love on the Run” (1979) and the rarely seen short “Antoine and Colette” (1962).
The Bride Wore Black
(July 12, 8 p.m.)
Truffaut’s homage to Alfred Hitchcock stars Jeanne Moreau as a woman who seeks revenge on the five men who killed her husband on her wedding day. Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich, it features a score by Hitchcock’s favorite composer, Bernard Herrmann. You’ll have fun spotting the many references to Hitchcock’s film in this wildly entertaining thriller.
Mississippi Mermaid
(July 12, 12 a.m.)
Another Hitchcockian affair based on a Woolrich novel, this darkly tinged love story stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wealthy tobacco farmer, and Catherine Deneuve as a mail-order bride who turns out to be a murderous imposter. Although poorly received upon its initial 1969 release, it’s since been reappraised as a neglected classic.
Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me
(July 12, 2:15 a.m.)
The evening’s theme of murderous women continues with this 1972 black comedy receiving its TCM premiere. Bernadette Lafont stars as a convicted killer being interviewed in prison by a sociologist. As she relates the story of her life and loves, it becomes clear that all of the men in her life are doomed to violent ends. But that doesn’t stop her naïve interlocutor from becoming hopelessly smitten and attempting to prove her innocence, with fateful results.
Shoot the Piano Player
(July 12, 4 a.m.)
One of the director’s most popular films. Charles Aznavour stars as a former concert pianist who’s traded in his fame to play in a seedy honky-tonk, only to become involved with murderous gangsters. Influenced by classic American crime movies of the 1930s and ’40s, it’s concerned less with genre conventions than examining its themes of love, inescapable family ties and the nature of success in a freewheeling, often lighthearted manner.
The Woman Next Door
(July 19, 2:30 a.m.)
Another TCM premiere, this 1981 film stars Fanny Ardant as a woman who finds herself reunited with her former lover, played by Gerard Depardieu, when they unwittingly become neighbors. Although each is now married, they quickly resume their passionate relationship, with predictably tragic results. Ardant, who would become Truffaut’s lover, went on to star in his final film, “Confidentially Yours,” being shown on July 12.
Day For Night
(July 26, 8 p.m.)
This 1973 film, receiving its TCM premiere, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and for good reason. Truffaut plays a beleaguered director trying to shoot a film despite endless complications caused by his neurotic ensemble of actors. The cast includes such familiar faces as Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Valentina Cortese and Jean-Pierre Aumont.
The Wild Child
(July 26, 12:15 a.m.)
One of several Truffaut films dealing with the subject of children, this 1970 film features the director in the starring role of a doctor who finds himself treating a young boy who was abandoned and left to raise himself in the woods years earlier. Set in the late 1700s and based on a true story, it depicts the doctor’s dogged efforts to civilize the institutionalized boy, whom his colleagues marginalize as a deaf-mute “idiot.”
The Story of Adele H
(July 26, 1:45 a.m.)
Isabelle Adjani received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her riveting portrayal of writer Victor Hugo’s daughter, who falls in love with a young English soldier who wants nothing to do with her. This disturbing portrait of self-destructive romantic obsession has a poetic depth that’s accentuated by the gorgeous cinematography by the great Nestor Almendros, who also shot “The Wild Child.”