"Don't forget to play this Miss Moreau with a smile": François Truffaut's correspondence is a precious document

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After "Correspondence with Writers" (2022), here is the even more anticipated "Correspondence with Filmmakers" by François Truffaut. Some of these letters were already known (notably his lively exchange with Godard from June 1973, from which we publish, for pleasure, an excerpt), but most are a discovery. Placed end to end, excellently illuminated by the notes of Bernard Bastide (with the help of Patricia Guédot) which we cite in brackets for ease of reading, they offer an insight into the central place that the man occupied in French cinema, as a fierce critic at "Arts" and "Cahiers du cinéma", director of the New Wave and almost father figure within the corporation. Meticulous, he kept both a copy of his letters and the replies from his correspondents, so that we witness, with Hitchcock for example, a dialogue of almost thirty years, from Truffaut's first letter in June 1962 to the long friendly exchanges where each had the script of his latest project read to the other.

This volume also provides a better understanding of how Truffaut viewed production. He did not hesitate to use his structure (Les Films du Carrosse), originally intended solely for the production of his films, to help struggling filmmakers, spending his time tirelessly to create, with other independent companies, a sort of cooperative whose model could still be used today. But he could also reto…

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