ROBERT JULIAN
41 3
page" and explained that he circumvented his fear by adapting "American
novels." But the fear would come to seem "excessive," from which it fol–
lowed that American or any other literature was merely a tool (and no cure
at all), something to fill the screen, something foreign. And in fact, references
to literature outside the context of film are rare in Truffaut's letters. He
swears by Balzac and Jacques Audiberti but otherwise has surprisingly little
to say on literary production, past or present. He remains a fervent,
"systematic" reader but in one odd genre only, actors' memoirs.
As
for the
works he adapted, as Freud wrote in regard to prostitutes, they are patently
secondary. He draws almost exclusively on detective novels or so-called
minor authors (Roche), as if "literature" was, by definition, something sublime
and unattainable, Doinel's dream.
Perhaps the gravest symptom of the crisis underway in French film–
making today is what is referred to as the scarcity of original screenplays.
The publication ofTruffaut's correspondence (the first, we are told, of sev–
eral volumes once the editorial search is carried out) is clearly meant to re–
new confidence in the industry. But one may also see in this three-and-a-half
pound, quarto paperback something like a funeral monument. QuotingJean
Cocteau's saying, "You must sing in your family tree," Truffaut in his films
assumed the heritage of Hitchcock and especially of Renoir with complete
maturity. It may have been in the nature of that heritage that this man who
loved literature also made sure the affair went unrequited.
