Totally Truffaut: 23 Films for

Understanding the Man and the

Filmmaker Anne Gillain
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Totally Truffaut
 Totally Truffaut
23 Films for Understanding the
Man and the Filmmaker

ANNE GILLAIN
F O R EWO R D B Y M A RT I N S C O R SE SE
F O R EWO R D T O T H E F R E N C H E D I T IO N B Y
M IC H E L M A R I E
T R A N SL AT E D B Y A L I STA I R F OX
E D I T E D B Y BA R RY LY D G AT E

1
 3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gillain, Anne, author. | Fox, Alistair translator
Title: Totally Truffaut : 23 films for understanding the man
and the filmmaker / Anne Gillain ; postface by Michel Marie ;
translated by Alistair Fox.
Other titles: Tout Truffaut. English
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021015019 (print) | LCCN 2021015020 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197536308 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197536315 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780197536339 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Truffaut, Franc¸ois—Criticism and interpretation.
Classification: LCC PN1998.3.T78 G55513 2021 (print) |
LCC PN1998.3.T78 (ebook) | DDC 791.4302/33092—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015019
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015020

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197536308.001.0001

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Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
For Sam
 Contents

Foreword by Martin Scorsese  ix

The Secret Rediscovered: Foreword to the French Edition by Michel Marie  xi
Preface  xvii
Acknowledgments  xxiii

Les Mistons (1958)  1

The 400 Blows (1959)  7
Shoot the Piano Player (1960)  21
Jules and Jim (1962)  35
Antoine and Colette (1962)  47
The Soft Skin (1964)  55
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)  67
The Bride Wore Black (1967)  77
Stolen Kisses (1968)  87
Mississippi Mermaid (1969)  101
The Wild Child (1970)  117
Bed & Board (1970)  129
Two English Girls (1971)  139
A Gorgeous Girl Like Me (1972)  151
Day for Night (1973)  161
The Story of Adele H. (1975)  175
Small Change (1976)  189
The Man Who Loved Women (1977)  201
The Green Room (1978)  217
viii Contents

Love on the Run (1979)  233

The Last Metro (1980)  243
The Woman Next Door (1981)  261
Confidentially Yours (1983)  277

Appendix  289
Bibliography  291
Index  293
 Foreword

François Truffaut’s passionate love affair with the cinema was lifelong, and
you can feel the intensity of it in his criticism, in his acting, in his advo-
cacy for his fellow filmmakers (Hitchcock and Renoir above all), and most
of all in his films. It animates every movie he ever made, every scene, every
shot, every cut. He spent a very long time in the editing room on each of
his pictures, and the result is that every movement in every frame looks like
it’s been lovingly scrutinized, so that every transition from one image to the
next surprises you. That’s the source of the unique sense of exhilaration in
Truffaut’s filmmaking.
More than any of his peers, Truffaut stood up for the continuity of film his-
tory. His book on Hitchcock is indispensable to anyone interested in movies,
but it’s also very unusual. Here was one of the world’s most established and
celebrated filmmakers devoting the same amount of time and energy it would
have taken him to make a movie (or maybe two movies) to a very lengthy se-
ries of interviews with a much older director in the twilight of his career, and
then crafting a book from it that has proven to be a bible for countless dir-
ectors. It’s an extraordinary act of homage, almost unthinkable today.
Of course, Truffaut carried that sense of history into his moviemaking.
Back in the early and mid-​1960s, people were always talking about how this
movie “quoted” from that older movie, but what almost no one talked about
was why the quote was there, what it did or didn’t do for the movie, what it
meant emotionally to the picture as a whole. In Truffaut, the historical aware-
ness and a thorough grounding in the emotional reality of the picture went
hand in hand. There are many echoes of Hitchcock in his movies, blatantly so
in The Soft Skin (underrated at the time of its release and a favorite of mine)
and The Bride Wore Black, not so blatantly in many other movies, and it’s al-
most impossible to quantify the importance of Jean Renoir to Truffaut (or,
for that matter, of Henry James and Honoré de Balzac—​Truffaut was also a
great reader). If you study his pictures closely, you can feel echoes of each of
them, but nothing ever feels extraneous to the film itself.
There are things that Truffaut did in those early movies that left a lasting
impression on me and on my generation of filmmakers. For instance, the
x Foreword

opening, breathlessly fast expository section of Jules and Jim, where time and
space are abolished and the images and the narration and the music flow like
a river, or the series of cuts in Fahrenheit 451, another underrated picture,
where the camera moves in close-​closer-​closest on a character in imminent
danger—​I admit that I’ve duplicated this pattern quite a few times in my own
films. And the character of the pianist played by Charles Aznavour in Shoot
the Piano Player—​always on the verge of making a move but never quite
doing it—​opened my eyes to a kind of ambivalence that I hadn’t previously
seen in movies.
And the dimension of time—​the desire to slow it down, the ever-​present
reality of its swift passing . . . Truffaut had such a unique gift for giving form to
this longing in us. It’s encapsulated in that moment at the end of Two English
Girls—​another underrated picture, and a masterpiece—​where Jean-​Pierre
Léaud’s Claude suddenly catches a glance at himself in the mirror and spon-
taneously murmurs the words: “My God, I look old.” And then, as quickly as
it arrives, the moment is over.
That’s life. And that’s Truffaut.

Martin Scorsese
 The Secret Rediscovered: Foreword to
the French Edition

Anne Gillain is without a doubt one of the leading international experts on

the work of François Truffaut. This is the third book that she has devoted
to her favorite filmmaker. In 1988 she compiled an anthology of interviews
with the director previously published in the national and international
press, classifying and arranging each film in chronological order; then, two
years later, she published a systematic analysis of his twenty-​one feature
films, grouped in pairs according to thematic associations that include, for
example, “family secrets” (The 400 Blows and The Woman Next Door), decep-
tion (Shoot the Piano Player and The Soft Skin), and queenlike women (Jules
and Jim and The Last Metro), ending with an analysis that explored Truffaut’s
final film, Confidentially Yours, for its playfulness.
That second book, titled The Lost Secret—​referring to the expression
Truffaut used to characterize the silent cinema of Chaplin and Lubitsch—​
drew mainly on the psychoanalytic concepts of Sigmund Freud, Melanie
Klein, and D. W. Winnicott. Gillain demonstrated that each of Truffaut’s
films constitutes in fact an unconscious response to a maternal figure who is
“distant, ambiguous, and inaccessible.” The biography of the young Truffaut
explains to a large extent the complexity of his relationship with his mother
and the importance of the idea of secrecy in his childhood; his mother be-
came for him a figure at once wonderful, fascinating, and inaccessible, and
a secret that haunted him throughout his life, as his last films, in particular
Love on the Run and The Last Metro, attest.
This third book complements the preceding one by analyzing chronolog-
ically Truffaut’s twenty-​one fiction films in the order in which they were cre-
ated, from The 400 Blows to Confidentially Yours, as well as two of the short
films that he made at the beginning of his career, Les Mistons and Antoine
and Colette. Gillain’s analyses incorporate new information brought forth
in the voluminous biography by Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana
that was published in 1996, and that explores areas like the circumstances
surrounding the films’ production and their relationship with the life of the
auteur. Gillain also draws upon Carole Le Berre’s book Truffaut au travail
xii Foreword to the French edition

(2004), an in-​depth study of the origins and genesis of each film based on
a study of the screenplays and production notes preserved at the Films du
Carrosse by the filmmaker himself, who was ever mindful of what he would
bequeath to posterity.
Totally Truffaut thus provides the reader with a remarkably detailed and
well-​informed analysis of each of Truffaut’s films, demonstrating the power
of the filmmaker’s creativity, the strength of his work, and the coherence of
his oeuvre. In fact, owing to the extraordinary success of his first full-​length
fiction film in 1959, Truffaut was lucky enough to produce or coproduce all
of his films with Les Films du Carrosse, the company he created at the very
beginning of his career with the support of Ignace Morgenstern, his father-​
in-​law. From then on he always paid close attention to the financial state of
the company, alternating his production projects’ costs between those with
modest budgets and films with more ambitious budgets that allowed him to
cast stars in the lead roles. The audience figures published in the appendix to
this volume give the total numbers of admissions for his productions; they
indicate that only one of the films he made during his career was a failure at
the box office; namely, The Green Room, one of his most personal and daring
films, which attracted only 153,525 admissions for the whole of France. The
rather exceptional production conditions he enjoyed allowed him to select
only those films that he wanted to make and to base them freely on orig-
inal subjects or on adaptations of a wide range of literary works that he in-
tegrated into his personal universe. As a result, the entire oeuvre of the
filmmaker consists of auteurist projects linked from one film to another by
close relationships involving a system of repetitions, cross references, and
citations. These intertextual correspondences are innumerable, and can be
identified thanks to what Anne Gillain calls “memory shots”—​shots that are
repeated in the body of the film without playing a dominant narrative role.
Thus, in her analysis of Confidentially Yours, she pinpoints twenty or so visual
or verbal motifs that link this final film to the rest of the filmmaker’s oeuvre.
All these cross references from one film to another show that the film-
maker was fully aware of creating a coherent body of work like those of
Balzac and Marcel Proust, his professed literary models, with the character of
Antoine Doinel being the most explicit manifestation of this unity from The
400 Blows to Love on the Run. Truffaut was in fact the first filmmaker of the
New Wave to implement this notion of works created as a cycle, well before
the series of Éric Rohmer (“Six Moral Tales,” “Comedies and Proverbs,” and
“Tales of the Four Seasons”), and Jacques Rivette’s variations on theatrical
 Foreword to the French edition xiii

staging for the cinema that include Paris Belongs to Us, The Nun, Gang of
Four, and Va savoir (Who Knows?).
Anne Gillain’s approach draws freely on the method of textual analysis es-
tablished by Raymond Bellour at the beginning of the 1970s with his well-​
known studies of two films by Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds (1963) and North
by Northwest (1959). She applies this method to a short excerpt from each
of Truffaut’s films, and relates the passage selected to the rest of the film and
Truffaut’s oeuvre as a whole. The fragments chosen from one film to the next
are very diverse in nature. They range from arresting narrative moments, like
the encounter of the young Doinel with his mother and her lover in the Place
de Clichy in The 400 Blows, to the murder-​suicide of the passionate couple in
The Woman Next Door. In Bed & Board, Two English Girls, A Gorgeous Girl
Like Me, The Man Who Loved Women, and Confidentially Yours they mostly
involve the final section of the film, and often concern key sequences like
the encounter of Antoine Doinel with Monsieur Lucien at the end of Love
on the Run and of Bernard Granger with Lucas Steiner in the cellar of The
Last Metro.
A number of these fragments are very short, like the one from Fahrenheit
451 (five shots lasting two minutes, thirty-​three seconds), when Montag
begins to read his first book, syllable by syllable, or the excerpts from The
Story of Adele H. (only two shots, the first lasting six seconds, the second,
very mobile and long, of one minute, forty-​eight seconds following Adele’s
movements when she visits a bank) and from Confidentially Yours (four shots
lasting one minute, forty-​eight seconds in the police station, which present a
story in flashback involving Barbara, the investigator). Other analyses con-
cern longer passages consisting of up to fifty shots: one sequence of four
minutes for the classic scene involving the declaration of love in Mississippi
Mermaid, with its thirty-​two close-​ups in shot /​reverse shot, with the faces
of Louis and Marion in alternation; forty-​one shots for the third occurrence
of the child’s dream presented in black and white in Day for Night, consisting
of twenty-​nine close-​ups of photos lasting twenty-​three seconds at the end
of the dream; and fifty very rapid shots during the “frugal meal” in Small
Change that the young Patrick bolts down when Madame Riffle serves him
the family’s pot-​au-​feu as he is devouring her with his eyes—​one of the rare
sequences in the filmmaker’s oeuvre that represents a character eating with
greedy enthusiasm. Rare, because Truffaut was by no means a gastronomist.
This typological variety of forms in the way each movie is cut and edited
demonstrates the virtuosity of Truffaut’s film style, which is far removed
xiv Foreword to the French edition

from the stereotypes of the classical model that is usually, and quite unjustly,
attributed to him. All of the fragments selected accord primary importance
to the choice of shot involved and also to the forms of editing. Thus, the de-
tailed analysis of the sixteen shots in the fragment from The Bride Wore Black
in which Julie Kohler poses as Diana the huntress, bow in hand, shows how
the central shot of two minutes (Julie and Fergus on the couch) is framed
by a succession of very brief shots, all of which last less than a second; with
great speed, they frame Julie’s mouth in extreme close-​up, her eyes, the arrow
stuck in the wall, the gaze of Fergus the painter as he sizes up his model—​all
arranged in a brief montage reminiscent of Soviet cinema at the end of the
1920s, or of those avant-​garde films whose montage can be so staccato and
dizzying.
As a result of these analytic choices, Gillain offers the reader a lesson in
the analysis of sequences of varying durations, parameters, and angles of ap-
proach; in this way, she elucidates the filmmaker’s mastery of a kind of filmic
expression that results in a veritable “manipulation of the spectator,” aimed
primarily at captivating viewers, enchanting them with the emotion that he
means to provoke.
Gillain draws in addition, and more fundamentally, on the theory of spec-
tatorship proposed by Raymond Bellour in Le Corps du cinéma, a theory that
is based in part upon the work of the child psychiatrist Daniel Stern, whose
ideas prove to be particularly enlightening when applied to the creative ap-
proach of François Truffaut. Gillain briefly summarizes these concepts in
short theoretical sections at the beginning of the chapters on The Wild Child,
Day for Night, and Small Change and in the course of the detailed analyses
that accompany them. Bellour’s own theory of spectatorship is explained in
the analyses of Mississippi Mermaid, The Story of Adele H., and The Woman
Next Door.
Stern makes a distinction between two main stages of human develop-
ment: that of the prelinguistic child, before its progressive acquisition of
verbal language in the first year of life, and that of the adult in control of their
words. The story of The Wild Child offers an almost perfect illustration of this
theory given that it deals with a child who is abandoned alone in a forest and
remains at the prelinguistic stage, and a well-​meaning adult, Doctor Itard,
who attempts day after day to educate the young boy by teaching him how
to speak and master his first words, such as the word “milk” and the name
“Victor” that Itard has given him. The film as a whole explores the mystery of
language and the symbolic system it represents (designated by words written
 Foreword to the French edition xv

on the blackboard and objects constructed out of pieces of wood) in confron-

tation with a prelinguistic perceptual system that privileges the senses other
than sight and hearing—​smell and touch, in particular. Truffaut understood
how communication between the world of the film and that of the viewer
could occur in a very different manner through bodies—​through the bodies
of characters, and hence through the bodies of the actors who played them.
Bellour’s insight is precisely to associate the emotion these physical
movements produce in the viewer with a form of hypnotism, an absorbing
captivation, a hypnosis that reactivates the infant’s prelinguistic mode of
perceiving the world. The language of cinema allows the spectator to recon-
nect with the earliest impressions of an infant as it discovers the external
world. But this hypnosis is not as dependent on narrative elements as it is
on the physical world of the film—​“the body of cinema that speaks directly
to the body of the spectator”—​that manifests itself through lighting, camera
movements, colors, rhythm, and transitions between shots, which together
constitute the material conditions of the film as organized through the mise
en scène.
Thus, in The Story of Adele H., the viewer’s identification with the character
of Adele, whom the camera almost never leaves, is generated by close-​ups
on the face of Isabelle Adjani, but even more by each element in the visual
field that surrounds her. Accordingly, emotion derives from a concentration
of signs that not only support the thrust of the narrative, but also surround
it, reinforcing through peripheral vision a narrative already focused on the
character. Or take Small Change, which, pitched at a child’s level but aimed at
an adult audience as well, reflects Daniel Stern’s bilingualism, the language of
the body and that of the word generating two possible levels of interpretation.
The major sequences of the film are in fact silent; their power comes from the
language of actions performed by children without words, sustained by the
themes of Maurice Jaubert’s very beautiful musical score.
Suffice it to say that Anne Gillain’s aim in this book is to demonstrate
that François Truffaut is truly one of the four or five great masters of French
cinema, along with Jean Renoir, Jacques Becker, Robert Bresson, Maurice
Pialat, and a certain number of his peers in the New Wave—​from Éric
Rohmer to Jean-​Luc Godard (here individual tastes may vary). To read her
analyses makes one immediately want to rewatch the films so as to discover
riches that went unnoticed in previous viewings. This is most true of the films
in which Truffaut’s genius is most obvious, such as Jules and Jim, The Wild
Child, Two English Girls, The Story of Adele H., The Man Who Loved Women,
xvi Foreword to the French edition

The Green Room, The Last Metro, and The Woman Next Door; but Gillain
rightly rehabilitates a number of other films that were poorly received when
they were first released—​films such as Shoot the Piano Player, The Soft Skin,
The Bride Wore Black, Bed & Board, Small Change, and Love on the Run. She
is right, for instance, to emphasize the central place of Mississippi Mermaid
at the beginning of the most creative phase of Truffaut’s career. She restores
to Day for Night its status as a work of clarity and depth that marked a cross-
roads. She identifies multiple levels of complexity to be found in The Last
Metro, a film of great density lying under a deceptively smooth appearance;
the metaphor of a palimpsest allows her to suggest six superimposed levels of
meaning in the film, levels that constantly intersect as the narrative unfolds.
But it is The Woman Next Door that is her favorite film, the one she sees as
Truffaut’s undeniable masterpiece:

Many critics rightly consider The Woman Next Door (1981) to be his most
perfect film. In the last ten years of his career, with ever-​increasing skill,
Truffaut developed strategies of mise en scène designed to mobilize the
viewer. They involve his handling of narrative organization and dialogue,
but also a ceaselessly refined mastery of nonverbal language: the use of
glances, hands, objects, spaces; framing choices and chromatic nuances
(color or black and white); effective editing and filmic punctuation; impec-
cably orchestrated musical counterpoints to visual and verbal content; fi-
nally, and above all, silent scenes that distill into a few shots what is at stake
in the narrative. Scenes like these belong so uniquely to Truffaut that they
can rightly be read as his private signature.

There is no better way of putting it.

The satisfactions of reading Totally Truffaut, in all its richness and subtlety,
are of a piece with the rewards of rewatching the filmmaker’s own films from
first to last. New techniques of remastering and distribution of the films, dig-
itally restored, greatly facilitate access to his oeuvre, so that we can consult it
as we would a volume in our personal library. Montag the fireman can rest
in peace. Truffaut and the men-​books have triumphed in their fight against
obscurantism and autos-​da-​fé. That is what Anne Gillain demonstrates with
such mastery in the pages that follow.

Michel Marie
 Preface

I get the feeling I don’t have much time left to do what I want to do.
—​François Truffaut, “Radioscopie”
with Jacques Chancel, April 15, 1975

Truffaut’s films have always attracted clichés the way evening gowns, brushing
the floor, attract dust. This book hopes to sweep away a few and cast new light
on one of the most lavish bodies of fiction in the history of French cinema.
Truffaut’s oeuvre has enjoyed dazzling international success, but is often con-
sidered popular entertainment for a mass audience. Charming is an adjective
associated time and again with Truffaut—​a baffling usage, considering that
the creation it characterizes plunges deep in the violence of passions and,
even in the light comedies, designates death as its vanishing point. It is true
that Truffaut translates his vision with an incomparable grace that may con-
ceal what is at stake. As with Ernst Lubitsch, the term that seems most fit-
ting to describe his work is elegance, a moral and aesthetic elegance certainly,
but an elegance that is above all artisanal, an elegance of craftmanship. Like
Lubitsch, Truffaut was a tireless worker who sought constantly to achieve
perfection and skillfully masked the enormous labor it took to make films
of such ethereal weightlessness. To evoke Truffaut is to conjure up images
that are all perfectly orchestrated, all perfectly staged, and whether ironic or
moving, totally unforgettable. Of them, Antoine Doinel at the edge of the sea
remains the most iconic. Truffaut’s unerring mastery at cultivating metaphor
forever places him in the lineage of Lubitsch, whom, along with Renoir and
Hitchcock, he considered one of his masters.
Metaphoric thinking is the connecting thread of this book, which traces
how the experiences of a life are transformed into the stuff of fiction. In 1991,
I published a first book on Truffaut’s films: François Truffaut: Le Secret perdu.
My approach was inspired by the theoretical writings of D. W. Winnicott
on juvenile delinquency. I suggested then that an ambivalent relationship
with a fantasized maternal figure provided a subterranean framework for
Truffaut’s stories. My book contained few references to the facts of his life
because at that time I was unaware of them. Instead, the films were linked
xviii Preface

in pairs according to thematic and stylistic affinities. The organization of

the present book, however, is resolutely chronological. Since 1990, two in-
dispensable works have appeared: on one hand, the biography by Antoine
de Baecque and Serge Toubiana, and on the other, the book by Carole Le
Berre, Truffaut au travail. Neither offers a textual analysis of Truffaut’s films,
but each is a mine of information and of critical insights. Using this new
data, I am proposing a second reading of Truffaut’s oeuvre that shows how
much films became for him a sort of intimate and private journal, written
in a coded language of great rigor and sophistication. Truffaut’s destiny was
marked by three critical experiences whose seismic repercussions impacted
his work, film after film: the 1943 discovery of his illegitimate birth; his dis-
comfort over the simultaneity of increasing international fame and a bour-
geois marriage in 1959; and, in 1969, the failure of a passionate love affair
with Catherine Deneuve that led to a severe depression—​“the black hole.”
These events constitute the three harmonic lines that his films will compose
into variations full of grace and imagination.
The most challenging aspect of working on Truffaut’s oeuvre is attaching a
name to the specific territory his films explore. One way to simplify the task
is to say that the terrain begins where language lays down its arms, a motif
that Truffaut in fact built into his films, where language is often a full-​fledged
character, whether intriguing, as in The Wild Child, or threatening, as in The
Story of Adele H. While words often empower the images, it is mostly the
failure of language that the stories commemorate. Truffaut’s fascination with
the written word and his love of literature are coterminous with his certainty
that the film’s hold on the audience is not reducible to linguistics: “A film
has nothing to say.” The word he favored—​as did Hitchcock—​to define his
goal as a film director was emotion. In his seminal book Le Corps du cinéma,
Raymond Bellour has brilliantly demonstrated that “emotion is hypnosis,”
and has analyzed the hypnotic state as a powerful link between the perceptive
modes of the prelinguistic child and those of the viewer of a fictional film.
Bellour’s analysis is inspired by a number of essential concepts found in the
work of the great American child psychiatrist Daniel Stern. It is in fact Stern
who formulates the question that in my opinion most accurately defines the
territory Truffaut explores. Describing what he calls “implicit knowledge,”
which belongs to the prelinguistic domain of inter-​psychic relations, Stern
asserts that the key question in defining this implicit knowledge is, “How do
I know that you know that I know?” Implicit knowledge cannot be trans-
posed into words. Resistant to language, its logic and its categories, it can
 Preface xix

never be translated into “explicit knowledge.” In human development from

childhood to maturity, explicit and implicit develop along parallel paths
without ever intersecting. Implicit knowledge is in no way repressed know-
ledge, but simply knowledge that is non-​verbalized and non-​verbalizable. As
Stern notes, it has been little studied, but those who understand it best are
artists, for whom it is the key to their success with audiences.
In the course of his career, as will become clear, Truffaut accorded the
viewer an increasingly prominent place—​a central one, in fact—​in his
system of representation. Among his many formulations that sum up the
imperatives of the work without codifying them as theory—​for example,
“The audience should be kept sitting with mouths agape,” and “A scene
shouldn’t be introduced in order to slot in a single idea, but to slot in six of
them”—​one in particular seems to bear on the issue raised by Stern: “Direct
information is to be avoided at all costs.” The statement is violent because
this rejection is fundamental to Truffaut’s entire system. Direct information
involves discursive language and logic, which immediately deny access to the
territory that interests Truffaut the most. Making viewers take the perceptual
detour described by Stern via an artistic medium requires mastery of a for-
midably complex system. As a child, the training Truffaut received in inter-
nalizing this system was faultless. Until the age of twelve, he was exposed to
the unspoken thoughts of the adults around him. Although the secret of his
birth certainly had a painful impact on his life, it also allowed him to develop
an acute sense of the truths hiding behind words intended to mask them.
Lying affords an early education in implicit knowledge. Faced with the inva-
sion of cinéma-​vérité, Truffaut would jokingly say he was in favor of cinéma-​
mensonge (a “cinema of lies”)—​that is, works that require imagination. In
this respect, his oeuvre has a lot in common with the work of the French nov-
elist and Nobel Prize laureate Patrick Modiano, who was also subjected as a
child to the crushing weight of adult lies. Like Modiano in his books, Truffaut
in his films explores this territory that eludes the force field of language but
where flourish the most profound and foundational passions in human ex-
perience. The problem is not reading the map, in this instance the map of
subterranean drives, but understanding how films succeed in submerging us
physically in this wild territory with its dangers, its enigmas, and its beauties.
Metaphor is key to accomplishing this task. Serving as a bridge between
unconscious autobiographical memory and conscious thought, it constitutes
a primary form of cognition that precedes language and the formation of
symbols. It is anchored in the experience of the body in space and speaks of
xx Preface

movements in terms of their momentum, their duration, their directionality.

A comparison of metaphor to symbol can open a window onto its singular
nature. Symbolic thought is conceptual and conscious; it uses the sentient
world to give form to ideas. Metaphorical thought on the other hand is sen-
sory and blind; those who engage in it remain unaware of the hidden links
between their experience and its aesthetic encoding. Truffaut often said that
he had not understood the relation between his life and certain of his films
until long after their release. My work is focused on the inflections of this
mode of thinking and on how they are communicated through the medium
of film. To illustrate how Truffaut handles the details of mise en scène, I have
selected for each film a short excerpt, from two to six minutes long, and ana-
lyzed it shot by shot. This allows me to foreground the formal strategies he
favored, including, for example, these three:

First and foremost, movement. The way in which bodies move through space
is a primary mode of expression in his films, and over the course of his ca-
reer Truffaut pays increasing attention to this dimension of filmic language.
There are films in which the mise en scène becomes a kind of choreography;
Truffaut organizes it in function of the music he arranges to be played during
the shooting of a scene, as he did with Isabelle Adjani in The Story of Adele
H. Working so intensively on movement allowed him to recapture the secret
of silent cinema, which would always remain for him the cardinal reference.
The management of time and duration. In his films, some scenes filled with
long, meandering shots seem to deliver precious little information that could
be considered narratively logical. Truffaut is giving the viewer a role to play
in the temporal dynamics of an inner event that is unfolding and that direct
information would be powerless to convey. In Antoine and Colette, Antoine
falls in love during a concert in a wordless scene that lasts for more than two
minutes; in The Soft Skin, an ascent in an elevator expands time to register
the crystallization of an amorous exchange. These subjective durations are
indifferent to the norms of reality. Especially in his final films, Truffaut con-
stantly jettisons logical connections and narratively rational explanations.
The power of metaphorical thought is such that the viewer does not even no-
tice these ellipses. No one has ever accused the films of lacking in clarity. Still,
as one critic has remarked, the script of The Last Metro is full of non sequiturs
that would have prompted any Hollywood producer to reject it. This tech-
nique reflects what Truffaut had learned from Lubitsch, whose films are so
 Preface xxi

full of narrative holes. “In Lubitsch’s Swiss cheese,” he wrote, “each hole is
awesome.” The same goes for Truffaut.
Memory shots. This last element is without doubt the most important be-
cause it reveals the most about Truffaut’s private system. What I am calling
“memory shots” are usually designated under the term “auto-​citation.” Critics
have sometimes seen such shots as signs of affectation or of obsessive ten-
dencies. Martin Lefebvre has compiled an extensive catalog of them in his
book. I have chosen the term “memory shot” because these shots work on the
memory of the viewer. They are shots—​or elements of shots: object, phrase,
gesture—​that are repeated within a film, or from one film to another. They are
designed to deflect the attention of viewers away from their routine habits. Too
numerous and too fleeting to support examination and rational analysis, they
bombard the imagination and disrupt habitual ways of parsing what is hap-
pening on screen. Whether confusing or entertaining, they create, as do the
other techniques, a hypnotic allurement that opens the way for a perceptual ex-
perience incommensurate with everyday perceptions. This is what the viewer
is looking for in fictional films; this is the fons et origo of cinephilia.
The delight that accompanies this experience stems from its ability to acti-
vate at full capacity the entire psycho-​corporeal system. Imagination in move-
ment not only carries with it the networks of what is explicit and implicit; it
whisks away the viewer’s body as well. Truffaut used to say he wanted to make
his audience cry and to take possession of them to the point where they no
longer knew where they were when they walked out of the theater. When
cinema achieves its full potency, the body of the film enters into symbiosis with the
body of the viewer, transporting it. Such is Raymond Bellour’s splendid thesis.
This book hopes to contribute to revising the critical view of Truffaut’s
films. Despite the recognition his works enjoy, the nature and evolution of
his oeuvre over a span of twenty-​five years have not entirely been accounted
for. Many clichés still abound, the most obvious being that only certain of
his films from the 1960s are worthy of being termed masterly. I believe my
analysis sweeps away the notion of a “bourgeois decline” toward a cinéma
de qualité, of which The Last Metro is supposed to be the leading example.
Chronological analysis of Truffaut’s work illustrates two things: a thematic
evolution from the passionate toward the spiritual and, more importantly, a
stylistic transformation toward a more concise, elliptical, dazzling filmic lan-
guage. Both developments validate his final films as true masterpieces. Many
critics rightly consider The Woman Next Door (1981) to be his most perfect
xxii Preface

film. In the last ten years of his career, with ever-​increasing skill, Truffaut
developed strategies of mise en scène designed to mobilize the spectator.
They involve his handling of narrative organization and dialogue, but also
mark a ceaseless refinement of nonverbal language: the use of glances, hands,
objects, spaces; framing choices and chromatic nuances (color or black and
white); effective editing and filmic punctuation; impeccably orchestrated
musical counterpoints to visual and verbal content; and finally, and above
all, silent scenes that distill into a few shots what is at stake in the narrative.
Scenes like these belong so uniquely to Truffaut that they can rightly be read
as his private signature. His last films reach a quasi-​mathematical precision
that, secretly and with masterly skill, approaches the realm of the unutter-
able. Few filmmakers have staged with such compelling accuracy the equa-
tions of the heart.
 Acknowledgments

At the outset of this volume, I would like to address much-​deserved thanks to

all who made the English version of this book possible.
I am deeply indebted to Alistair Fox for his wonderful work as a translator
and to Barry Lydgate for his flawless editing of this volume. The book also
benefited a great deal from Lorraine McCune’s patient review of the manu-
script. I thank them all for their combined effort in turning Tout Truffaut into
Totally Truffaut.
I also want to thank Norman Hirschy, who immediately expressed interest
in welcoming Tout Truffaut to the prestigious collection of Oxford University
Press books on cinema. I am most appreciative of his constantly positive en-
dorsement of my work. I am grateful, too, to Sampath Kumar who proved
endlessly attentive and helpful during the intricate process of transforming
my manuscript into an accurately and elegantly produced book.
I must of course express my gratitude to Michel Marie for his durable, ac-
tive, and most effective guidance over the years. A long way back, he was my
adviser for the dissertation I wrote on Truffaut in the film program at the
Sorbonne, and subsequently remained a strong inspiration for my work. In
2018, he welcomed Tout Truffaut to the collection of books on cinema he
oversees at the French publisher Dunod. My warmest thanks also go to the
editors of this book at Dunod, Jean-​Baptiste Guges, Cécile Rastier, and Gail
Markham.
My thanks would not be complete without acknowledging the invaluable
support from Wellesley College that made possible the completion of this
volume. The generous grant the college awarded me helped cover the transla-
tion cost of Totally Truffaut and is a perfect example of the college’s readiness
to support the research of its faculty members, even in their emeritus years.
Finally, my special thanks go to Martin Scorsese for generously agreeing to
write a Foreword to the English edition. François Truffaut would have been
profoundly appreciative of this thoughtful assessment of his work by one of
the world’s greatest directors. That homage makes Totally Truffaut whole.
 Les Mistons (1958)

Every time I had to film things that had to do with the subject, that is,
the way the five children harassed the couple, I felt uncomfortable.
Whereas every time I did things with the kids that were more like a
documentary, I was happy, and it went well.
—​To Charles Bitsch, August 11, 1956

“I regard Les Mistons as my first film,” Truffaut said in 1974. In 1954, with his
friends Jacques Rivette and Jacques Doniol-​Valcroze, he had shot Une Visite,
a short film in which he would quickly lose interest. He alone, however, was
responsible for conceiving and making Les Mistons. The project was based
on a novella by Maurice Pons published in a collection called Les Virginales,
the style and subject of which appealed to him. In a town in the South, five
rascals (mistons in the Provençal dialect) are having fun tormenting a pair
of lovers, Gérard (Gérard Blain) and Bernadette (Bernadette Lafont), until
a headline in a newspaper reports an accident in the mountains in which
Gérard is killed. This short film was meant to be one in a series of sketches
about childhood, as was La Fugue d’Antoine, which eventually became a full-​
length film, The 400 Blows.
When he started making Les Mistons, Truffaut got a good deal of sup-
port from his close friends. Robert Lachenay, a childhood friend, had
just inherited some money from his grandmother and became the asso-
ciate producer of the film. Claude de Givray participated in the shooting
of the film and even offered its hero a light, after an irascible bystander
had refused to do so. Gérard Blain was fresh from his first role in Julien
Duvivier’s film Deadlier Than the Male (1956), with Danièle Delorme and
Jean Gabin. Truffaut, after meeting Blain’s wife, Bernadette Lafont, asked
her to act the part of the fiancée in the film. In 1974, he would recall her in
these words: “As for Bernadette, who was not yet twenty, she had only to
enter and say ‘Hello’ to blow three floodlights!” Gérard Blain was peeved

Totally Truffaut. Anne Gillain, Martin Scorsese, Michel Marie, Alistair Fox and Barry Lydgate, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197536308.003.0001
2 Totally Truffaut

to see his wife steal the limelight over the course of the shoot, which took
place in Nîmes during the summer of 1957. The film, screened out of com-
petition at the festival of short films in Tours on November 23, 1957, went
on to achieve a certain degree of success. It did not receive a theatrical re-
lease until the autumn of 1958.
Meanwhile, on October 29, 1957, Truffaut married Madeleine Morgenstern,
the daughter of Ignace Morgenstern, a major distributor and producer of
the 1950s. Truffaut had met the young woman in September 1956 at the
Venice Festival, where she was selecting films for her father. It was Ignace
Morgenstern who introduced Truffaut to his collaborator at Cocinor, Marcel
Berbert. Berbert subsequently helped the future filmmaker create his own
production company, Les Films du Carrosse, for the making of Les Mistons
and would remain at his side until Truffaut’s death, even making cameo
appearances in seven of his films, Bed & Board, Mississippi Mermaid, Two
English Girls, Day for Night, Small Change, The Man Who Loved Women,
and The Last Metro. As a result, Les Mistons plays an essential role in a career
that established itself financially with this early film. Its role is even more
obvious at the artistic level. Although resolutely New Wave in its natural
settings, its elliptical narrative, the absence of stars, its citations (The Sprayer
Sprayed), and its schoolboy pranks, Les Mistons prefigures in a striking way
the aesthetic tendencies found in Truffaut’s future works. Here are a few of
these elements.
First of all is the voice-​over narration that occurs in his greatest films: Jules
and Jim, Two English Girls, and The Man Who Loved Women. Les Mistons was
made, Truffaut says, to “serve a beautiful text,” whose style reminded him of
Cocteau’s. “It was,” he said, “a music that was familiar to me.” As the narrator
he chose a familiar cinematic voice, that of Michel François, who in France
dubbed James Dean and in 1960 would dub Anthony Perkins in Psycho. In
addition, the film anticipates the major components of the later stories: chil-
dren, desire, and writing. While shooting Les Mistons, Truffaut discovered
that he was very much at ease working with young actors, and he subse-
quently made three famous films dealing with childhood. The desire that
unites the couple in the film is both passionate and threatened, as it will con-
tinue to be in film after film until it reaches its high point in The Woman Next
Door. The danger that hangs over the couple in Les Mistons is represented on
screen by a close-​up of a page from a newspaper. The death-​dealing power
of writing and texts would always haunt Truffaut’s films, culminating in
 Les Mistons (1958) 3

The Story of Adele H. In 1984, Martine Barraqué, the editor who worked on
eleven films with Truffaut, remarked: “Death is present in all of his films.”
This was already true of Les Mistons, where death suddenly disrupts an oth-
erwise sunny story. Two visual components should also be added to these
narrative elements: the influence of earlier masters, in this case Renoir and
A Day in the Country (1946)—​the film contains sumptuous shots of shade at
the water’s edge, and even the scene of the satyr chasing the young woman—​
and above all the beauty of images that celebrate the gracefulness of the fe-
male body in motion (bike, tennis, running in the countryside) accompanied
by a musical theme that is both lyrical and lighthearted. These are the shots
that we will look at here.
As the credit sequence of Les Mistons rolls, we see radiant images of
Bernadette, shot from the front, as she rides her bicycle through the streets
of Nîmes. On a sunny summer day, she heads away from the city, skirt flying
in the wind. When the credits end, the images continue to follow Bernadette
on her bike. As she crosses the Pont du Gard, a pan to the left frames two of
the mistons of the title in close-​up. They are observing the young woman. The
music fades, giving way to a voice-​over.

1. Close-​up, mobile, 8″. A rapid pan begins on the bridge and ends on a
close-​up of the two mistons. Beginning of the story in voice-​over.
2. Full shot, mobile, 28″. Bernadette, seen from the front, rides her bicycle
in the shade.
3. Extreme long shot, mobile, 21″. Bernadette on her bike, seen in profile,
framed behind the trees.
4. Extreme long shot, mobile, 25″. She gets off her bike and heads toward
the water.
5. Full shot, mobile, 8″. The mistons run through the woods behind her.
6. Close-​up, mobile, 2″. They approach her bicycle, which is leaning
against a tree.
7. Close-​up, mobile, 2″. A zoom in on the bicycle.
8. Extreme close-​up, static, 4″. One of the rascals bestows a kiss on the
seat. A slight slowdown within the image.

Taken as a whole, the credit sequence and this segment comprise two
minutes, eighteen seconds of shots that show Bernadette on her bicycle. For
a film that only lasts seventeen minutes, twenty seconds, this is a substantial
4 Totally Truffaut

length of time. These images define the film. Thinking perhaps of Hitchcock,
Truffaut said this about the movement of the camera:

Images of a bike in motion are always enjoyable. When you film them, you
know that everything will go well: there is a marvelous accord between
cinema and moving vehicles. As long as you hold the camera on something
moving, a car, a locomotive, a bike, you know you’re in the movement of
the film.

Jules and Jim will later explore this motif to great effect. In Les Mistons the
pan that ends on a static close-​up of the faces arrests this movement. The
gaze of the two boys presents an obstacle and signals a threat. The voice-​over
also interposes a distance. We are no longer in the present moment, but in
a return to the past. The mistons and the young woman constitute a system
of contrasts: movement versus fixity; distance versus proximity; spectacle
versus spectator. This arrangement is echoed in the Nîmes arena, during the
game of tennis, and then in a movie theater: the mistons are little spectators
with their eyes fixed on an object that arouses confused desire. The image
reflects their frustration at being separated from a body that the camera
seizes with effortless grace. Fences give form to the obstacle. We’re meant to
keep in mind the iconic shot that sums up the work to come: the intertwined
bodies of the fiancés as they embrace behind a high gate with black bars.
Desire and its forbiddance: this shot, which does not correspond to any nar-
rative logic within the story, is already totally Truffaut. The children’s frus-
tration is going to turn into hostility, as the close-​up at the beginning told
us it would. Shots 2, 3, and 4 frame Bernadette in shots that are increasingly
distanced and contrast with close-​ups of her bicycle leaning against a tree in
6 and 7. It’s a wonderment, this displacement of desire for the body onto a
machine that culminates in the final shot, shot 8, of a boy kissing the bicycle
seat—​so unexpected, so indirect and allusive, so scandalous, so Truffaut.
Here is the text as it appears in Truffaut’s source:

When she went to bathe in the river, she left her bicycle locked at the access
point. Since she always rode with her skirt flying, and doubtlessly without
a petticoat, it happened, on hot days, that the seat of her bike would end up
quite damp. . . . It was not uncommon that one of us, unable to help himself,
would break away and, with no bravado or false shame, lay his face for a
moment on that seat, privy to unknown mysteries.
 Les Mistons (1958) 5

And now here is Truffaut’s voice-​over:

When she went to bathe in the river, she would leave her bicycle leaning
against a tree, holding us in its spell.

The spareness of the text is largely counterbalanced by the visual shock of

the silent kiss on the seat, filmed in a slowed-​down extreme close-​up. The
violence that emerges from the image is absent from Pons’s text. This reifica-
tion of feminine sensuality will become a major motif destined to crystallize
the irrepressible power of feminine seduction in an object (photo, statue, lin-
gerie). Fetishism is not far off. This structuring of desire as an object impos-
sible to attain in the flesh is, of course, the experience of the viewer watching
a film. In Les Mistons, writing (a postcard) seeks to abolish distance. The shot
of a newspaper headline announcing a death immediately follows the shot of
the postcard. With Truffaut, letters are slow-​release grenades and writing is
deadly. The last shot of the film shows Bernadette, dressed in black, walking
down a long street near the river with a grim expression. This shot—​tragic
but mobile—​is the reciprocal of the images of the beginning.
We will encounter the widow and the five mistons, now adults, again in The
Bride Wore Black. We will also encounter a female body walking freely, inde-
pendently, harmoniously along the streets of a sunny southern town in the
credit sequence of Confidentially Yours, Truffaut’s final film, made in 1983.
Les Mistons is a small film no doubt, but one that is infinitely graceful and
precious, and for anyone interested in the dynamic of Truffaut’s imagination,
a prototype of the work to come.
 The 400 Blows (1959)

To make the beginning stronger, I think I will drop the idea of re-
vealing Antoine’s illegitimacy and replace it with another reve-
lation: while playing hooky, Antoine runs into his mother with a
younger guy, her lover.
—​To Marcel Moussy, June 7, 1958

In undertaking his first film, François Truffaut encountered the classic

problem faced by authors who draw upon their own life for inspiration: the
reaction of those close to them. His autobiographical project consisted of
telling the story of a young boy, Antoine Doinel, superbly acted by Jean-​Pierre
Léaud, and of his family problems. The action is set in Paris in 1958, the time
at which the film was being shot. It depicts a fateful cycle that culminates
in the social exclusion of a child of twelve, over the following stages: a ne-
glected chore; an enormous lie (the death of his mother); his running away;
an accusation of plagiarism involving a work by Balzac; a second instance of
running away, including a night spent wandering around Paris; the theft of a
typewriter; arrest and confinement in a prison cell; detention in an observa-
tion center for juvenile delinquents in Normandy. The end of the film shows
Antoine attempting to escape, only to find himself, in one of the most famous
shots in cinema, confronted by the sea, alone.
For Truffaut, dealing with his childhood meant talking about his parents.
In 1958, they were both alive and relatively young. In his case, the issue was
particularly painful because it touched upon paternity and his filial status
as a nonmarital child. He was what was called at the time un enfant naturel,
having never known the identity of his father. Roland Truffaut had married
François’s mother when he was three years old, giving the boy his name.
Truffaut’s whole youth—​and all of his works—​bore the mark of this secret
surrounding his origins. We know the circumstances under which Truffaut,
then aged twelve, discovered the truth. The moment occurred when he was
alone in the apartment—​which was often the case, since on the weekends his

Totally Truffaut. Anne Gillain, Martin Scorsese, Michel Marie, Alistair Fox and Barry Lydgate, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197536308.003.0002
8 Totally Truffaut

parents used to go climbing in the forest at Fontainebleau. He was rumma-

ging through his father’s things and found Roland Truffaut’s datebook for
the year of his birth, 1932. For February 6, his birthday, there was no entry.
Carole Le Berre quotes a note written by Truffaut dating from 1957–​1958, in
which he describes the scene:

A little boy of thirteen, alone at home, discovers, while going through some
things, his father’s old datebooks. His curiosity leads him to check the date-
book for the year of his birth to see what his father might have written on
that day. He discovers that his birth is mentioned neither on that day nor on
the days that follow, and so learns that he is not his father’s son. He finds de-
finitive confirmation in the family record book. (The ending, which is really
the development of his situation, remains to be worked out.)

In writing his screenplay, Truffaut chose not to disclose this hidden truth.
Just as he transposes the years of his childhood—​which took place during the
German Occupation—​into the contemporary period, he decides to modify
the nature of the family secret: illegitimacy turns into adultery. The scene in
The 400 Blows in which Antoine discovers that his mother has a lover is thus
the echo of a revelation made all the more brutal by the fact that at the time
he did not share it with anyone. Here is the scene, which occurs twenty-​three
minutes into the film.

1. Extreme long shot, mobile, 17″. Place Clichy. The children approach.
2. Extreme long shot, static, 5″. A couple, seen in profile, embraces near
the Métro.
3. Close shot, static, 4″. Madame Doinel and her lover, seen from behind.
4. Close-​up, static, 2″. The couple seen in profile. Kiss.
5. Close shot, moving, 3″. The children draw near. Antoine sees his mother.
6. Close-​up, static, 2″. The couple. She sees him.
7. Close shot, mobile, 1″. The children pass around the couple.
8. Close-​up, static, 1″. The couple. She pushes her lover away.
9. Close shot, mobile, 1″. The children move off.
10. Close-​up, static, 4″. The couple. She is speaking.
11. Close-​up, static, 1″. The couple, seen from behind. The lover turns
around, speaks, and looks at Antoine.
12. Close shot, static, 2″. The children continue walking, seen from behind.
 The 400 Blows (1959) 9

13. Close shot, static, 3″. The children continue walking, seen from in
front. A bus passes.

The viewer is struck right away by the dazzling speed of this scene, which
captures the event in forty-​five seconds and thirteen shots. It begins with a
long shot of the Place Clichy, bathed in winter sunlight, filmed from a slight
high angle. Antoine and his friend René, followed by a pan, are roaming
in total freedom through the streets of Paris and smoothly blending into a
crowd of passers-​by. Lasting seventeen seconds, this shot is the longest in the
scene, occupying one-​third of the segment. Everyday life is unfolding at a
peaceful tempo and in a harmonious space. The second shot, also high angle,
shows us the exit of the Métro in the middle of the square. From this distance,
few viewers will recognize Gilberte Doinel—​although she is wearing her
perpetual mouton fur coat—​in the arms of an unknown man whom she is
kissing passionately. These kisses will be repeated in close-​up. The lovers are
shown in profile, oblivious of the passers-​by. From a distance, we can see the
children moving directly toward them. There follows a rapid series of seven
shots that focus alternately on the children and the couple. Each one lasts
barely a second. The rhythm of the shots has completely changed, shifting
to a series of close-​ups: four for the couple and three for the children. In this
lightning-​swift exchange, the mother’s gaze meets her son’s. Each of them is
struck dumb. Without a single word being exchanged, everything has been
knocked off balance. The two final shots show the children moving off. René
is worried: Antoine should be at school; he is going to be punished. Antoine,
clear-​headed, tells him there is no danger. His mother won’t be able to say an-
ything to his father. The man she was kissing is a total stranger.
The visual dynamics of this scene call for two observations. The exchange
of glances between mother and son is filmed in a rapid series of shots /​reverse
shots in which the adulterous couple is caught in static close-​ups, whereas
the camera follows the children with tracking shots. The couple remains mo-
tionless; the children walk by without slowing down. Truffaut is a master of
cinematic movement; space in his films becomes a character in its own right.
His work as a director consists first and foremost of locating moving bodies
in their rightful place. Unlike photos, which memorialize the death of a mo-
ment, cinema captures life in its flow; in this respect, Truffaut’s work falls
directly within the heritage of silent cinema. In this segment, it is noteworthy
that, from beginning to end, command of movement belongs to the children
10 Totally Truffaut

and that this movement is circular. The Place Clichy is a round space, of
which the adulterous couple occupies the center. The children are made to
walk around the couple, which accentuates the spherical nature of their tra-
jectory. Antoine does not stop when he sees his mother; there’s barely a pause
when he recognizes her. The extreme mobility of the children is contrasted
with the mother’s inability to move. Caught out, Madame Doinel remains
petrified under her son’s gaze. She becomes a statue. At the beginning of Jules
and Jim we see the two friends, dressed in white, traveling to Greece to see
the statue of a woman they consider a feminine ideal. The movement of these
two men around their statue is also circular. Like the statue in Jules and Jim,
Madame Doinel is turned into an icon.
The visual dynamics of this scene prompt a second observation. One detail
in particular is notable. The children are filmed crossing the Place Clichy from
right to left—​that is, counterclockwise. In Western culture, this movement is
neither natural nor comfortable. It is not how the eye moves while reading.
The children command movement, but here their movement contradicts the
cultural norm. By contrast, the long traveling shot toward the sea at the end
of the film will move from left to right, accommodating the eye rather than
frustrating it. While he is running, Antoine will be tracked in three long, con-
tinuous, traveling shots. Racing in this linear way toward freedom is the an-
tidote to circling around a feminine figure seen as both overpowering and
fascinating. Whether centripetal toward death or centrifugal toward life, the
race seeks distance from the center, which, for Truffaut, will always be the
feminine. The same dynamic movement of a linear traveling shot from left to
right can be observed at the end of Jules and Jim. Coming out of the cemetery
where Catherine and Jim are interred, Jules crosses the space at a brisk pace,
and his steps are all the more lively because they trace a long, gentle slope.
The voice-​over mentions his “relief ”; the image translates this relief spatially.
The iconic quality conferred on Madame Doinel by the children’s circular
motion is greatly magnified by the aura of mystery that suddenly surrounds
her. There exists a moment in the development of every child when they
wonder about the intimate life of their parents. The nature of the reply will
have an impact on the emotional development of the child. For Antoine
Doinel, the revelation is bound to be traumatic since it undoes the parental
couple and brutally modifies the balance of power in the family triangle.
The father’s position is called into question, and from then on a secret unites
the mother and the son. Unwillingly, they become a couple bonded against
the father; an incestuous situation has just been created. In The 400 Blows,
 The 400 Blows (1959) 11

Antoine is about twelve years old, an age at which the biological reality of
the body obliges a child to ask himself frank, physical questions about sex
and its functions. Curiously, the film seems to shy away from addressing this
theme frontally—​it remains veiled, apart from a question asked by the psy-
chologist: “Have you ever slept with a girl?”—​to which Antoine replies in the
negative, naturally and without embarrassment. However, closer examina-
tion reveals that sexuality is indeed present. Without being explicitly men-
tioned, it is manifest in a metaphorical transposition that precisely reflects
the questions and fears that a child that age would entertain. Sexuality is
incorporated into the story in the form of a code that is appropriate to the
imagination of a youth. First of all, the masculine and the feminine are not
presented as being on a par in the film: while men abound, there are only six
women: Madame Doinel, René’s mother, the two gossips, the psychologist,
and Jeanne Moreau. Madame Doinel largely dominates this group. She is se-
ductive and intriguing. The objects on the dressing table at the beginning
of the film introduce the mystery she embodies. Later on, Madame Doinel’s
stockings and the women’s lingerie shops whose storefronts are shown in
several scenes pursue this focus on objects of seduction. There is, in addition,
a darker, more disquieting vein of thought associated with the feminine. It
emerges at the beginning of the story in the account of a bloody childbirth
reported by two gossips in front of the store where Antoine goes to buy flour.
White flour, dark blood—​the maternal womb is evoked indirectly, at a re-
move, through objects that displace the real referent.
In Truffaut’s films, objects, like space, constitute one of the major codes
of communication with the viewer. It is worth noting that in The 400 Blows
the feminine is associated with the idea of sticky viscosity: the filthy gar-
bage can—​belonging to Madame Doinel—​that poor Antoine handles with
disgust; the eggs that stick to Monsieur Doinel’s fingers, much as the soiled
paper in the rubbish bin sticks to the boy’s fingers. The feminine body is
scary and unfathomable, like the sewer into which Antoine tosses his bottle
of white milk. The real question is less about feminine sexuality than about
the ability of this body to produce life, a child, or to expel it while wishing it
dead. In the absence of a tenderness to temper his fears, the boy finds him-
self alone confronting the mysteries of the adult world. How to reconcile the
objects of seduction with biological reality? The one fascinates; the other
terrifies. Lingerie and makeup offer protection against the viscous and the
unfathomable. Between these two poles—​seduction and terror—​there can
be no mediation. Hence the fetishism that is so present in Truffaut’s work.
12 Totally Truffaut

The only reassuring woman in the film, the psychologist, is presented as dis-
embodied. All we know about her is her voice: Antoine confides to her that
his mother tried to have an abortion when she was pregnant with him. One
of the French films Truffaut saw most frequently during the Occupation—​
when he was Antoine’s age—​was Le Corbeau (1943) by Clouzot. He mentions
that he learned many new words from it, including the word “abortion.” Far
more than sexual function, it is the function of maternal gestation that is at
issue in Truffaut’s film.
It is time to examine the framing of this fragment in the flow of the story.
The order into which scenes are arranged is extraordinarily masterful in
Truffaut’s films. It imposes a subterranean logic that organizes our reading
of the film. It’s the lesson Hitchcock taught: emotion is created in the editing.
This emotional effect is all the more powerful when the logic that links two
scenes seems to elude us. The segment that precedes the encounter in the
Place Clichy–​the episode involving the amusement park ride known as the
Rotor—​is one of the most famous in the film. Just before seeing his mother,
Antoine experiences a moment of sheer joy. He enters a rotor and gives him-
self up to its gyratory force. Here, circular movement is at its acme. The rotor
is filmed from three different angles by the camera: from Antoine’s subjec-
tive point of view; from the point of view of René, who is a spectator; and
from a position across from Antoine in the interior of the machine, which
allows us to see him wriggling as he is flattened by centrifugal force against
the wall of the rotor. In other words, the scene evokes visually, in minute de-
tail, an experience that lasts two minutes through sixteen shots. In this scene,
Antoine bursts into laughter and enjoys himself like a normal child; he is
lighthearted, happy, and relaxed. Above all, he is weightless. Later on, we will
see how vertical space constitutes one of the essential vectors in Truffaut’s
films, in all of which movement occurs from the bottom upward. This is,
of course, a fundamental dimension of the universal imaginary and can be
found in many works of art. Hitchcock constructed his masterpiece Vertigo
(1958) around fear of the void. The child’s first achievement, before it begins
to learn language, is the mastery of vertical space. For Antoine, the rotor
suspends the constraining force of gravity. The consensus of critics has al-
ways been that this fairground ride is an evocation of the first machines to
break down movement into images, and thus a figuration of cinema itself.
Antoine is not alone in the machine, since Truffaut makes an appearance in it
à la Hitchcock. United with his creator and alter ego in a magical system that
abolishes weight, Antoine is floating. The ensuing fall back to earth will be
 The 400 Blows (1959) 13

all the more brutal. Prologue to the family drama that is about to play out in
the Place Clichy, the episode of the rotor presents a round, matrix-​like space
in which the child, protected from all danger, is assured of a rebirth under
the sign of a strong, protective masculine figure. Before he is rejected by life,
cinema takes him in hand. Truffaut the moviemaker is there, reeling along
with him.
Now for a look at the scene that follows the encounter in the Place Clichy.
At first, Antoine appears barely to react to this event. Apart from his comment
about the man, “I’ve never seen him,” no mention of the couple is exchanged
between the two friends. This elision does not occur in the screenplay, in
which, as Carole Le Berre explains, Antoine displays his distress to his friend.
Truffaut decided to skip over it in order to focus on a specific issue: the ex-
cuse slip that Antoine will need to contrive in order to go back to school. Still,
viewers might well find this omission surprising. Antoine has just seen his
mother with a lover who a second earlier he did not know existed, and all he
is concerned about is the excuse note. René furnishes him with a model, and
we will see him attempt unsuccessfully to forge his mother’s “jagged” writing
on a piece of paper. We will come back to this point.
Cinema is “language in action,” and, as is often the case with Truffaut, in the
absence of words, it is the situations that speak. Here they are commensurate
with the enormity of the shock Antoine has received and depict the chilling
effect of the catastrophe. Antoine’s reaction mutates metaphorically into two
different forms. The first concerns his father. Madame Doinel does not come
home that night—​one can imagine that she is less than anxious to return to
the bosom of the family; father and son are going to be entre hommes—​“just
guys”—​at dinner. Monsieur Doinel dutifully begins to make an omelet and,
decked out in a frilly apron, to explain Madame Doinel’s complex personality
to his son. As he shakes off the egg white dripping from his hands, he says: “She
loves you, you know, she loves you. Merde!” The “Shit!” underscores his dis-
gust at the stickiness clinging to his fingers; still, one can perhaps infer that the
assurance of love that precedes it is made under circumstances that are, at the
very least, ambiguous. Antoine laughs. Monsieur Doinel, clumsy, diminished
by his feminine task and his ridiculous apron, cannot serve as a male model.
He is a buffoon—​likable, but completely emasculated. The encounter Antoine
witnessed in the Place Clichy has shattered his image of the father. The second
consequence involves, of course, the mother. The issue here is very simple: for
Antoine, she is dead. It is clear that he has not premeditated the monstrous lie
he tells when his teacher seizes him by the sleeve and asks him point-​blank to
14 Totally Truffaut

explain himself. He begins by saying, “It’s my mother . . .” and seems to be un-

able to find words. When the teacher presses him, “What about your mother?”
his answer bursts out as though he had no control over it: “She is dead!” What
has come out of him is a cry from the heart. His defiant lie is unmistakable,
but so is his distress at discovering the unknown woman Madame Doinel has
become. As it happens, this strange woman now suddenly resembles him. In
fact, a kind of mimesis has emerged, linking mother and son. The secret they
share binds them together. That day both were truants. As a sign of the fused
identity and complicity that now exists between them, the next morning we
see Madame Doinel sit down at her dressing table in a shot that is identical to
the one that showed Antoine, alone in the apartment at the beginning of the
film, touching the items she needed to groom herself. This identity of mother
with son culminates in the scene in which Madame Doinel, after having given
Antoine a bath, proposes to enter into an agreement with him.
It is worth pausing for a moment over this scene, which reveals the imme-
diate consequences of the encounter in the Place Clichy. Madame Doinel’s
motives are clearly murky. She is buying Antoine’s silence. In Two English
Girls, the mother similarly enters into a pact to separate the hero from the
woman he loves. These pacts, between adults and children, are redolent of
duplicity. In The 400 Blows, the fragility of the child is powerfully rendered
through images. Antoine is naked, vulnerable, and speechless in the marital
bed while his mother is speaking to him. The whole scene is filmed in static
close-​ups of their two faces. The tension is extreme. Antoine nevertheless
allows himself to become co-​opted, and does his best to honor their agree-
ment: that he will complete a good essay for his French literature class. His
efforts end up precipitating the tragedy involving Balzac, and the fire, which
is the prelude to Antoine’s exclusion.
And the scene that immediately follows the pact between mother and son?
Visually, the contrast is violent. After the shot /​reverse shot close-​ups, Truffaut
inserts a vertiginous aerial shot taken from the roofs of Paris downward to
the streets. After the indoor space full of tension, we get open space and the
streets of Paris, a gym teacher leading breathing exercises, and a band of young
pupils following him. One by one, children peel off and disappear at each
street corner. Truffaut is here citing a filmmaker he particularly admired, Jean
Vigo. Vigo’s film Zéro de conduite (1933) includes a similar scene but, instead
of a gym teacher, it is a school monitor, Jean Dasté, who is leading the young
schoolboys. Jean Dasté would later act in two of Truffaut’s major films: The
Man Who Loved Women and The Green Room. In The 400 Blows, this scene,
 The 400 Blows (1959) 15

which, from a logical point of view, is not connected to any other element in the
story, appears immediately following the words of Gilberte Doinel, in close-​up,
saying to her son: “Don’t say anything about this to your father. It will be our se-
cret.” As was the case with Monsieur Doinel in his flounced apron, the figure of
the male model is reduced irrevocably to a mere shadow, but freedom is never-
theless recovered through transgression and an allusion to a great film classic.
The editing of the film thus obeys the subjective logic of Antoine Doinel with
the exactitude of an interior monologue.
To return now to the most surprising element of this scene: the absence
of any discussion between the two boys about the lover, and their obsession
with filling a sheet of paper with writing. The latter is prompted by the need
to write an excuse note that will allow Antoine to return to school on the fol-
lowing day. We should first note that the encounter in the Place Clichy was
set in motion by the fact that Antoine had not written out the lines he was
assigned as his punishment—​that is, by another blank sheet of paper. To un-
derstand this fixation with writing in the film, we need to return to the facts
of Truffaut’s biography—​specifically, to the shock that the discovery of the
secret regarding his parentage had caused him as a child. Truffaut himself
recounts the facts in two moving letters addressed to Roland Truffaut. The
first was sent when he was seventeen years old:

April 2, 1949
Dear Papa,
The reason I’m telling you my troubles is that, despite what you think,
you’re the one I trust. Discovering my filiation did not, as you believe, make
me feel estranged from you. Though it estranged me from Mom, it brought
me closer to you. Indeed, before knowing the truth, I suspected there was
something abnormal in my family situation and I even thought that though
you were my real father, Mom wasn’t my real mother. I believed this for a
long time, for your behavior and Mom’s confirmed this idea. This is why
I was shattered to learn that the opposite was true. But deep down you’re
still my real dad and Mom a stepmother.

The second dates from the release of the film:

May 27, 1959

I would have shot a truly horrifying film had I depicted what my life was
like on rue de Navarin between 1943 and 1948, and my relationship with
16 Totally Truffaut

Mom and you. . . . It so happens that this revelation was a great shock to me,
and I think I told you it occurred while I was rummaging through a cup-
board and found the 1932 datebook and then the family record book. Did
I also tell you that the family atmosphere was such that I was almost sure
there was a secret having to do with my birth; Mom hated me so much that,
for a year, I thought she wasn’t my real mother.

If the notion of a secret is at the heart of Truffaut’s creation, it is because

secrecy crucified his childhood. As he explains, he always “knew” that this
secret existed. Children sense such things, and the repercussions are often
immediate: problematic behavior at school and petty delinquency. The ex-
istence of a family secret provides a simple mechanism for understanding
learning disabilities at school: “You don’t want me to know the only thing that
really interests me; I won’t learn anything you want me to learn at school.” The
same implacable logic operates in the case of theft: “You don’t want to give me
what is rightfully mine: your love; I will steal what I am not allowed to have.”
These petty larcenies involve a preference for useless objects in accordance
with this logic: “I’m not stealing for gain, but as a form of revolt.” The alarm
clock pilfered in the cinema; the typewriter. It is telling that if the young boy
suspects there is a secret, he thinks it involves the Truffaut spouse: she could
not be his biological mother. The enigma is about her, not about his father.
This made the shock of his discovery all the greater. He describes himself as
“shattered” when he realized that Roland Truffaut was not his real father. For a
child as extraordinarily fragile and imaginative as the young Truffaut was, the
visual circumstances of the revelation are a factor that cannot be overlooked.
In remembering moments at which we suddenly received some distressing
news, we recall vividly the materiality of the moment: the weather, where we
were, the medium that gave us the news: a voice on the radio, that of a parent
on the telephone, the paper on which the distressing news was written. The
paper. It was in fact on a sheet of white paper that Truffaut learned the truth
about his parentage. It was a blank page, a page without writing, that revealed
to him that he did not know his father, and that the father he loved was not
his. Where he should have been able to find his name the family register was
also blank. Antoine is an écriture that is absent, a blank space on the paper.
For someone as sensitive as he was to looks and to the appearance of things,
this double white page necessarily left an indelible mark on his imagination. It
seems impossible to avoid linking to this initial experience the omnipresence
of the white sheet of paper and writing in Truffaut’s work.
 The 400 Blows (1959) 17

Truffaut’s heroes are all facile writers, except poor Antoine. Each time he
has to write, he finds himself blocked from doing so. When he composes
his poem on the wall, the teacher makes him erase it. Worse, he points out
that in wiping the sponge so awkwardly over his text Antoine has “soiled”
the wall. This recalls the vignette at the end of the first sequence of the film
in which a very young pupil slaves away trying to copy a poem and ends up
by having no more pages in his exercise book, because he has had to tear
out all the pages marred by inkblots. He too has “soiled.” This scene, which
has so much charm, metaphorically emblematizes Antoine’s tragic destiny.
Writing appears to refuse its own inscription on the page; it makes not a text
but a blotch. The white page for the day of Truffaut’s birth becomes the page
on which no writing comes into being, the page of blots and erasures. Paper
resists writing and rejects it. In the film, writing is firmly associated with
Madame Doinel: her pact with Antoine hinges on writing an essay for French
class. The secret of the mother’s body suddenly becomes a great drama of
writing. The transubstantiation of paper into flesh and ink into blood is
imprinted in the imaginary of Truffaut’s films because its fundamental truth
is the flaw of his parentage. One thinks of the phrase in Jules and Jim that
recurs in Two English Girls: “This page is your skin. This ink is my blood. I am
pressing hard so that it penetrates.” Filiation is a marriage of skin and blood,
but above all of paper and ink.
François Truffaut notes in his letter of 1959 to Roland Truffaut that his film
considerably softens the sufferings he endured during his childhood. The
400 Blows not only attenuates the biographical reality, it radically modifies it.
The film is not content simply to transpose illegitimacy into adultery; above
all, it subjects the material circumstances of the discovery to an astonishing
metamorphosis. In real life, the child was alone inside his parents’ apartment
when he discovered the secret. In the film, this experience is transposed into
the open air, located in the middle of a benevolent city, and in the company
of a very dear friend. The lover (a substitute for the unknown father) is given
a face and even gets a close-​up, which demystifies him. In addition, there is
a reference to cinema involved, since the actor who plays this role is a great
critic, a friend of Truffaut—​and an assumed homosexual—​Jean Douchet.
Everything is reversed: interior/​exterior; solitude/​friend; empty apartment
/​crowded city. This need to transform lived experience is a way of exorcising
it and the sign of an indomitable resilience. Moreover, this street scene is set
in what was Truffaut’s favorite playground, the Place Clichy. Located near his
home in the ninth arrondissement, on the rue de Navarin, it was the site of many
18 Totally Truffaut

cinemas. The Gaumont Palace, one of the temples of the seventh art in Paris,
with a theater that could seat six thousand—​“the largest cinema in the world”
according to its ads—​was enthroned there among more modest theaters, for
example, the Atomic. They are all shown in the film, and Place Clichy enjoys
a privileged position throughout the Doinel series. At the beginning of Stolen
Kisses, Antoine, upon being discharged from the army, rushes off to the Place
Clichy and crosses it, tracked by a high-​angle crane shot. In 1977, the hero
of The Man Who Loved Women would report his terrible distress at having
seen the majestic Gaumont replaced by a particularly unattractive Ibis
hotel. Throughout The 400 Blows the streets are Antoine’s refuge, where he
plays and runs with René, filmed in long shots. For him, Paris is a nurturing
mother. He drinks its milk during his night wandering, and washes himself
in the water of its fountains. In the scene of the adulterous kiss, this privileged
place is suddenly violated and contaminated by the violence of the Doinel
household, in which Antoine, filmed in static close-​ups, is constantly on the
alert. It is in this most public square that the most intimate drama between
mother and son will unfold. The close-​ups of Madame Doinel’s face signal
this contamination. Antoine’s territory has been invaded and taken over.
However, the first and the last shots of the scene are long shots in which
the children blend into the setting that they are traversing at a leisurely pace.
Paris as a sanctuary has not been desecrated. It is Madame Doinel who has
strayed into enemy territory. The scene ends with the two children moving
away from the entrance to the Métro where they encountered the couple.
They cross a street as they make their way around the square. They exit the
shot, but instead of cutting at this point, shot 13 shows a bus passing in the
street, allowing it to fill the frame. Why did Truffaut choose to cut at this bus
rather than cutting at the children? The bus establishes a visual caesura. Its
massive body and its movement erase the menacing presence of the adul-
terous couple. It evokes, above all, the momentum of a city filled with activity,
a city whose exuberant vitality nothing can block. It restores a reassuring
routine. The flow of the city has carried the boys to this island in the middle
of the square, the ebb takes them away, and the water closes in around them.
Paris protects them.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 ⅓ cup soft shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1½ cups black molasses

Stir in ...

½ cup cold water

Sift together and stir in ...

6 cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. cloves
1 tsp. cinnamon

Stir in ...

2 tsp. soda dissolved in 3 tbsp. cold water

Chill dough. Roll out very thick (½″). Cut with 2½″ round cutter. Place
far apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake until, when touched
lightly with finger, no imprint remains.
temperature: 350° (mod. oven).
time: Bake 15 to 18 min.
amount: 2⅔ doz. fat, puffy 2½″ cookies.

FROSTED GINGIES
Follow recipe above—and frost when cool with Simple White Icing
(recipe below).

SIMPLE WHITE ICING

Blend together 1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar, ¼ tsp. salt, ½ tsp.
vanilla, and enough milk or water to make easy to spread (about 1½
 tbsp.). Part of icing may be
colored by adding a drop or two
of food coloring.

GINGERBREAD BOYS
Make holidays gayer than ever.
Follow recipe above—and mix in 1 more cup sifted GOLD MEDAL
Flour. Chill dough. Roll out very thick (½″). Grease cardboard
gingerbread boy pattern, place on the dough, and cut around it with
a sharp knife. Or use a gingerbread boy cutter. With a pancake
turner, carefully transfer gingerbread boys to lightly greased baking
sheet. Press raisins into dough for eyes, nose, mouth, and shoe and
cuff buttons. Use bits of candied cherries or red gum drops for coat
buttons; strips of citron for tie. Bake. Cool slightly, then carefully
remove from baking sheet. With white icing, make outlines for collar,
cuffs, belt, and shoes.
amount: About 12 Gingerbread Boys.

★ STONE JAR MOLASSES COOKIES

Crisp and brown ... without a bit of sugar.
Heat to boiling point ...

1 cup molasses

Remove from heat

Stir ...

½ cup shortening
 1 tsp. soda

Sift together and stir in ...

2¼ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

1¾ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1½ tsp. ginger

Chill dough. Roll out very thin (¹⁄₁₆″). Cut into desired shapes. Bake
until, when touched lightly, no imprint remains. (Over-baking gives a
bitter taste.)
temperature: 350° (mod. oven).
time: Bake 5 to 7 min.
amount: About 6 doz. 2½″ cookies.

PATTERN FOR GINGER BREAD BOY

Trace on tissue paper. Then cut pattern from cardboard. Place
greased pattern on dough. Cut around it with a sharp knife. Other
cooky patterns can be made in same way.
To make “dancing” Gingerbread boys ... bend the legs and arms into
“action” positions when you place them on baking sheet (as shown in
small figures above).
Packing cookies successfully for mailing
1 Select heavy box, lined with waxed paper. Use plenty of filler
(crushed wrapping or tissue paper, or unbuttered popcorn or
Cheerios).
2 Wrap each cooky separately ... in waxed paper. Or place cookies
back-to-back in pairs ... then wrap each pair.
3 Pad bottom of box with filler.
Fit wrapped cookies into box
closely, in layers.
4 Use filler between layers to
prevent crushing of cookies.
5 Cover with paper doily, add
card, and pad top with crushed
paper. Pack tightly so contents
will not shake around.
6 Wrap box tightly with heavy
paper and cord. Address plainly
with permanent ink ... covering
address with Scotch tape or
colorless nail polish. Mark the
box plainly: “PERISHABLE.”
Festive Christmas Cookies
★ 1 Sandbakelser
★ 2 Spritz Rosettes
★ 3 Merry Christmas Cookies, Trees, Stars, etc.
★ 4 Nurnberger
★ 5 Almond Crescents
★ 6 Lebkuchen
★ 7 Scotch Shortbread
★ 8 Berliner Kranser
★ 9 Finska Kakor
★ 10 Russian Tea Cakes

Gay shapes ... for holiday cheer.

MERRY CHRISTMAS COOKIES ( Recipe)

Soft, cushiony cookies, dark or light.
DARK DOUGH.... For animal shapes, toy shapes, and boy and girl
figures.
Mix together thoroughly ...

⅓ cup soft shortening

⅓ cup brown sugar
1 egg
⅔ cup molasses

Sift together and stir in ...

2¾ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
 2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger

Chill dough. Roll out thick (¼″). Cut into desired shapes. Place 1″
apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake until, when touched
lightly with finger, no imprint remains. When cool, ice and decorate
as desired.
temperature: 375° (quick mod. oven).
time: Bake 8 to 10 min.
amount: About 5 doz. 2½″ cookies.

LIGHT DOUGH
For bells, stockings, stars, wreaths, etc.
Follow recipe for Dark Dough above except substitute honey for
molasses, and granulated sugar for brown. Use 1 tsp. vanilla in
place of cinnamon and ginger.

TO HANG ON CHRISTMAS TREE

Just loop a piece of green string and press ends into the dough at
the top of each cooky before baking. Bake with string-side down on
pan.

TO DECORATE
Use recipe for Decorating Icing (p. 31) (thin the icing for spreading).
For decorating ideas, see picture on preceding page. Sugar in
coarse granules for decorating is available at bakery supply houses.
STARS
 Cover with white icing. Sprinkle with sky blue sugar.
WREATHS
Cut with scalloped cutter ... using smaller
cutter for center. Cover with white icing.
Sprinkle with green sugar and decorate with clusters
of berries made of red icing—leaves of green icing—
to give the realistic effect of holly wreaths.
BELLS
Outline with red icing. Make clapper of red icing. (A
favorite with children.)
STOCKINGS
Sprinkle colored sugar on toes and heels before
baking. Or mark heels and toes of baked cookies
with icing of some contrasting color.
CHRISTMAS TREES
Spread with white icing ... then sprinkle with green sugar.
Decorate with silver dragées and tiny colored candies.
TOYS
(Drum, car, jack-in-the-box, etc.):
Outline shapes with white or colored icing.
ANIMALS
(Reindeer, camel, dog, kitten, etc.): Pipe icing
on animals to give effect of bridles, blankets,
etc.
BOYS AND GIRLS
Pipe figures with an icing to give desired effects:
eyes, noses, buttons, etc.

“Old country” Christmas treasures.

LEBKUCHEN ( Recipe)
The famous old-time German Christmas Honey Cakes.
Mix together and bring to a boil ...

½ cup honey
½ cup molasses

Cool thoroughly
Stir in ...

¾ cup brown sugar

1 egg
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. grated lemon rind

Sift together and stir in ...

2¾ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

½ tsp. soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cloves
1 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. nutmeg

Mix in ...

⅓ cup cut-up citron

⅓ cup chopped nuts

Chill dough overnight. Roll small amount at a time, keeping rest

chilled. Roll out ¼″ thick and cut into oblongs 1½ × 2½″. Place one
inch apart on greased baking sheet. Bake until when touched lightly
no imprint remains. While cookies bake, make Glazing Icing (recipe
below). Brush it over cookies the minute they are out of oven. Then
quickly remove from baking sheet. Cool and store to mellow.
temperature: 400° (mod. hot oven).
time: Bake 10 to 12 min.
amount: About 6 doz. 2″ × 3″ cookies.

GLAZING ICING
Boil together 1 cup sugar and ½ cup water until first indication of a
thread appears (230°). Remove from heat. Stir in ¼ cup
confectioners’ sugar and brush hot icing thinly over cookies. (When
icing gets sugary, reheat slightly, adding a little water until clear
again.)

★ NURNBERGER
Round, light-colored honey cakes from the famed old City of Toys.
Follow recipe above—except in place of honey and molasses use
1 cup honey; and reduce spices (using ¼ tsp. cloves, ½ tsp. allspice,
and ½ tsp. nutmeg ... with 1 tsp. cinnamon).
Roll out the chilled dough ¼″ thick. Cut into 2″ rounds. Place on
greased baking sheet. With fingers, round up cookies a bit toward
center. Press in blanched almond halves around the edge like petals
of a daisy. Use a round piece of citron for each center. Bake just until
set. Immediately brush with Glazing Icing (above). Remove from
baking sheet. Cool, and store to mellow.
amount: About 6 doz. 2½″ cookies.

TO “MELLOW” COOKIES
... store in an air-tight container for a few days. Add a cut orange or apple; but fruit
molds, so change it frequently.
ZUCKER HÜTCHEN (Little Sugar Hats)
From the collection of Christmas recipes by the Kohler Woman’s Club of Kohler,
Wisconsin.
Mix together thoroughly ...
 6 tbsp. soft butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg yolk

Stir in ...

2 tbsp. milk

Sift together and stir in ...

1⅜ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt

Mix in ...

¼ cup finely cut-up citron

Chill dough. Roll thin (⅛″). Cut into 2″ rounds. Heap 1 tsp. Meringue
Frosting (recipe below) in center of each round to make it look like
the crown of a hat. Place 1″ apart on greased baking sheet. Bake
until delicately browned.
temperature: 350° (mod. oven).
time: Bake 10 to 12 min.
amount: About 4 doz. 2″ cookies.

MERINGUE FROSTING
Beat 1 egg white until frothy. Beat in gradually 1½ cups sifted
confectioners’ sugar and beat until frosting holds its shape. Stir in ½
cup finely chopped blanched almonds.

Decorative favorites from lands afar.

SCOTCH SHORTBREAD
Old-time delicacy from Scotland ... crisp, thick, buttery.
Mix together thoroughly
...

1 cup soft butter

⅝ cup sugar (½ cup
plus 2 tbsp.)

Stir in ...

2½ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

Mix thoroughly with hands. Chill dough. Roll out ⅓ to ½″ thick. Cut
into fancy shapes (small leaves, ovals, squares, etc.). Flute edges if
desired by pinching between fingers as for pie crust. Place on
ungreased baking sheet. Bake. (The tops do not brown during
baking ... nor does shape of the cookies change.)
temperature: 300° (slow oven).
time: Bake 20 to 25 min.
amount: About 2 doz. 1″ × 1½″ cookies.

★ FINSKA KAKOR (Finnish Cakes)

Nut-studded butter strips from
Finland.
Mix together thoroughly ...

¾ cup soft butter

¼ cup sugar
1 tsp. almond flavoring

Stir in ...

2 cups sifted GOLD

MEDAL Flour
Mix thoroughly with hands. Chill dough. Roll out ¼″ thick. Cut into
strips 2½″ long and ¾″ wide. Brush tops lightly with 1 egg white,
slightly beaten. Sprinkle with mixture of 1 tbsp. sugar and ⅓ cup
finely chopped blanched almonds. Carefully transfer (several strips
at a time) to ungreased baking sheet. Bake just until cookies begin to
turn a very delicate golden brown.
temperature: 350° (mod. oven).
time: Bake 17 to 20 min.
amount: About 4 doz. 2½″ × ¾″ cookies.
SANDBAKELSER (Sand Tarts)
Fragile almond-flavored shells of
Swedish origin, made in copper molds
of varied designs.
Put through fine knife of food
grinder twice ...

*⅓ cup blanched almonds

*4 unblanched almonds

Mix in thoroughly ...

⅞ cup soft butter (1 cup

minus 2 tbsp.)
The ring of sleigh bells fills the air as
¾ cup sugar everyone races to church on Christmas Day
1 small egg white, in Finland.
unbeaten

Stir in ...

1¾ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

*In place of the almonds, you may use 1 tsp. vanilla flavoring and 1
tsp. almond flavoring.
Chill dough. Press dough into Sandbakels molds (or tiny fluted tart
forms) to coat inside. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake until
very delicately browned. Tap molds on table to loosen cookies and
turn them out of the molds.
temperature: 350° (mod. oven).
time: Bake 12 to 15 min.
amount: About 3 doz. cookies.
MOLDED COOKIES Mold ’em fast with
a fork or glass!

HOW TO MAKE MOLDED COOKIES (preliminary steps on pp. 14-

15)

1 With hands, roll dough 2 Flatten balls of dough 3 Cut pencil-thick strips
into balls or into long, with bottom of a glass ... and shape as directed
pencil-thick rolls, as dipped in flour (or with a ... as for Almond
indicated in recipe. damp cloth around it), or Crescents (p. 41) or
with a fork—crisscross. Berliner Kranser (p. 42).

DATE-OATMEAL COOKIES
Mix together thoroughly ...

¾ cup soft shortening (half butter)

1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3 tbsp. milk
1 tsp. vanilla

Sift together and stir in ...

2 cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

¾ tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt

Stir in ...
 2 cups rolled oats
1½ cups cut-up dates
¾ cup chopped nuts

Chill dough. Roll into balls size of large walnuts. Place 3″ apart on
lightly greased baking sheet. Flatten (to ¼″) with bottom of glass
dipped in flour. Bake until lightly browned.
temperature: 375° (quick mod. oven).
time: Bake 10 to 12 min.
amount: About 4 doz. 2½″ cookies.

★ PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES ( Recipe)

Perfect for the Children’s Hour.
Mix together thoroughly ...

½ cup soft shortening (half butter)

½ cup peanut butter
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg

Sift together and stir in ...

1¼ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

½ tsp. baking powder
¾ tsp. soda
¼ tsp. salt

Chill dough. Roll into balls size of large walnuts. Place 3″ apart on
lightly greased baking sheet. Flatten with fork dipped in flour ...
crisscross. Bake until set ... but not hard.
temperature: 375° (quick mod. oven).
time: Bake 10 to 12 min.
amount: About 3 doz. 2½″ cookies.

HONEY PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

Follow recipe above—except use only ¼
cup shortening, and in place of brown sugar
use ½ cup honey.

Sprightly tea cakes for friends and family.

THUMBPRINT COOKIES Nut-rich ... the thumb dents filled with

sparkling jelly.
I’m as delighted with this quaint addition to our cooky collection, from Ken
MacKenzie, as is the collector of old glass when a friend presents her with some
early thumbprint goblets.
Mix together thoroughly ...

½ cup soft shortening (half butter)

¼ cup brown sugar
1 egg yolk
½ tsp. vanilla

Sift together and stir in ...

1 cup sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

¼ tsp. salt

Roll into 1″ balls. Dip in slightly beaten egg whites. Roll in finely
chopped nuts (¾ cup). Place about 1″ apart on ungreased baking
sheet. Bake 5 min. Remove from oven. Quickly press thumb gently
on top of each cooky. Return to oven and bake 8 min. longer. Cool.
Place in thumbprints a bit of chopped candied fruit, sparkling jelly, or
tinted confectioners’ sugar icing.
temperature: 375° (quick mod. oven).
time: Bake 5 min., then 8 min.
amount: About 2 doz. 1½″ cookies.

★ ENGLISH TEA CAKES Tender, flavorful tidbits with a sugary

glaze.
Mix together thoroughly ...

½ cup soft shortening (half butter)

¾ cup sugar
1 egg
3 tbsp. milk

Sift together and stir in ...

1¾ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

1½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt

Mix in ...

½ cup finely cut sliced citron

½ cup currants or raisins, cut-up

Chill dough. Roll into balls the size of walnuts. Dip tops in slightly
beaten egg white, then sugar. Place sugared-side-up 2″ apart on
ungreased baking sheet. Bake until delicately browned. The balls
flatten some in baking and become glazed.
temperature: 400° (mod. hot oven).
time: Bake 12 to 15 min.
amount: About 3 doz. 1½″ cookies.

ALMOND CRESCENTS
Richly delicate, buttery. Party favorites.
Mix together thoroughly ...

1 cup soft shortening (half butter)

⅓ cup sugar
⅔ cup ground blanched almonds

Sift together and work in ...

1⅔ cups sifted GOLD MEDAL Flour

¼ tsp. salt

Chill dough. Roll with hands pencil-thick. Cut in 2½″ lengths. Form
into crescents on ungreased baking sheet. Bake until set ... not
brown. Cool on pan. While slightly warm, carefully dip in 1 cup
confectioners’ sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon mixed.
temperature: 325° (slow mod. oven).
time: Bake 14 to 16 min.
amount: About 5 doz. 2½″ cookies.

LEMON SNOWDROPS
Refreshing, lemony ... with snowy icing.
Follow recipe for English Tea Cakes above—except use 2 tbsp.
lemon juice and 1 tbsp. water in place of the milk. Add 2 tsp. grated
lemon rind. Omit citron and currants. Mix in ½ cup chopped nuts.
Chill dough. Roll into balls and bake. Then roll in confectioners’
sugar.

BUTTER FINGERS
Nut-flavored, rich buttery party cookies.
Follow recipe for Almond Crescents—except in place of almonds use
black walnuts or other nuts, chopped. Cut into finger lengths and
bake. While still warm, roll in confectioners’ sugar. Cool, and roll in
the sugar again.
Festive cookies for the holidays ... ideal for Christmas boxes.