ROBERT JULIAN
409
have no place in them (though the "buddie system" was one of the hallmarks
ofthe avant-garde movement to which he belonged, the "Nouvelle Vague").
Indeed, he mentions at one point preferring "epistolary intimacy" to the di–
rectly verbal kind, and he is expert at finding reasons to write across town
rather than be in touch in person or on the phone. In exchange, and as ifby
contract, Truffaut is extraordinarily giving of his time and energy when it
comes
to
answering young artists who have sent him a manuscript or sought
advice, or for writing out of the blue to compliment an actor or director for a
performance, or to ask an associate not to take it badly that, this once, he has
decided not to work with him on a film. Correspondents thus tend to become
friends if they are not already. Curiously, he casts this seduction in geo–
graphical terms: "by my work and my way oflife, I am a man of the Right
Bank." But one understands where that claim, and the poise and regularity of
the letters, come from. Truffaut rejects the high-keyed skittishness of the
Left Bank artist. Instead of romantic torment, he prefers to express senti–
ments, recurring states like affection, emotion, sympathy, sincerity, and plea–
sure, which are plainly and in a somewhat artificial way psychological. It may
be that this psychology (which is closer to Marivaux or Renoir than to
abnormal or depth psychology, and only distantly akin to what Hitchcock
called his "laws of suspense") offers us the only vantage possible on the flip
side of the autobiographer's life, and there he plays a stock figure, the friend.
Although these letters have virtually no other subject than the cinema,
they are similarly reserved about Truffaut's changing view of his art. His
drift away from the New Wave and "my father Rossellini" is writ mostly
between the lines, though there is one virulent, revealing clash (with Jean–
Luc Godard) to make it unforgettable. More interesting, given the apocalyptic
mood in the French film industry today , is how little the future of cinema
seemed to worry him. (Again, he is less guarded in some of his published es–
says which speak of real and imagined difficulties facing the industry.) In a
letter from 1963, Truffaut preaches to the Minister of Information that a
"new public has been born," a public with "personalized reactions," and he
appears to have remained convinced that, barring censorship, nothing could
endanger the future of the art or its public. He sees television, today's culprit
responsible for the closing of moviehouses, shrinking production budgets, and
a generalized loss of nerve, in the same way: his only concern is that free–
dom of personal expression be maintained there as well. He is content to
stay at home at night and watch the movie.
Three ofTruffaut's early films were victims of what he called "the law
of the scissors" but which was in fact a law of silence or of age restrictions.
Four Hundred Blows,
a movie about childhood, was originally banned for
children;
Shoot the Piano-Player
and
Jules and Jim
were restricted on counts
