Read instead…in print #35: How Directors Dress

Some years ago, I wrote about François Truffaut, his alter egos in movies and their looks that so often channeled his own. What got me started was his brown leather jacket he wore on the set of La nuit américaine and also in the film (he was also a character in it). What directors wear on the set I find fascinating, because that single fact in itself can tell so many stories. The paragraphs below are an extract from that article.

““The film of tomorrow will be filmed by adventurers,” François Truffaut said as an introduction to what would become La Nouvelle Vague. “The film of tomorrow will not be filmed by technicians, but by artists for whom film will be an extraordinary and impassioned adventure. The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.”

In a scene from La nuit américaine (1973), director Ferrand (François Truffaut) throws down a pile of his latest film-book acquisitions (Bresson, Hitchcock, Dreyer, Lang, Godard, Rossellini, Hitchcock, Bergman). The entire film is Truffaut’s love letter to movie-making. The film, which remains one of the best ever about the world of cinema, is about the making of Meet Pamela, and by the name of it, it’s clear it’s not a masterpiece. But that’s not important. To Ferrand, it doesn’t matter whether the film is a success or not, the important thing is the collective process leading to it, not the final product.

“I make movies that resemble those that I loved,” said François Truffaut. I think these words do not ring truer than in relation to La nuit américaine. There are so many references to other films and directors in this film, which was specifically dedicated to Lillian and Dorothy Gish. There are many tricks behind the camera revealed. Even the title, La nuit américaine (Day for Night), refers to the technique used to shoot night scenes in daytime using special filters. And the filming of Meet Pamela takes place at the Victorine Studio in Nice, in the south of France, which has produced movies since the silent days. But it is Truffaut’s love of making films per say that permeates the entire movie.

Ferrand is always alone throughout the film. The passion from during the day, when he’s on the set the entire time, transforms into a recurring nightmare when he is alone in bed at night, haunted by the image of a little boy who steals Citizen Kane film stills from a cinema where the movie is screening (something Truffaut himself used to do in his childhood). When he is confronted with Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) wanting to quit the filming because his girlfriend has left him, Ferrand tells him: “Don’t be a fool. You’ve got your work. That’s what matters. No one’s private life runs smoothly. That only happens in movies. No traffic jams, no dead periods. Movies go along like trains in the night. People like you and me are only happy in our work.” Those were Truffaut’s own thoughts.

Film can also offer immortality. Actors live on through film. Truffaut sometimes acted and he sometimes made small appearances in his films (just like Hitchcock). I wonder if that was another way of him of making sure he will be remembered. For Truffaut, his movies were a means of attaining the absolute, the permanent.

And if he did not act or appear in one of his films, one of his alter egos did, sometimes even wearing his clothes. Truffaut often wore a brown leather jacket, usually with a blue shirt and tie, as he did in La nuit américaine. Bertrand Morane (Charles Denner) wears a similar jacket in L’Homme qui aimait les femmes (1977) and Jean-Pierre Léaud wears both the jacket and shirt in L’Amour en fuite (1979).

Truffaut wrote that, in L’Amour en fuite, Antoine Doinel is “always on the run, always late, a young man in a rush… Antoine should stop…running away…he should take advantage of the present… should stop settling a score with his mother through every girl he meets.” In turn, Léaud said in interview with Magda Mihăilescu that “François was obsessed with time, he was restless, always in alert, he thought he couldn’t do everything that he wanted to, he always had two-three movies in his head.” We see the resemblance. Doinel is in fact either profoundly disappointed, edgy, neurotic, or elated and bursting with enthusiasm. The two states of mind Truffaut seemed to have oscillated between his entire career, his entire life. He was only happy when working on a film and the completion of a project brought his spirits down. Doinel wears a brown leather jacket, blue shirt and tie (with or without a sweater) in the film, the exact same outfit that Truffaut did in La nuit américaine. As Léaud said about his great friend and director, “His films were his reality.” “

Last year, A24 Publishing had a great idea for a book: How Directors Dress. From François Truffaut on the set of Mississippi Mermaid, in his burnt orange rollerneck pullover with his pack of cigarettes rolled up in the bottom of his sleeve, to Jean Luc Godard’s office white shirt, plaid tie and Ray Ban sunglasses on the set of Le Mépris, to John Cassavetes’ polo t-shirt on the set of Gloria, to Kathryn Bigelow on the set of Strange Days, the book uses clothing to tell new stories about directors, their lives, their individualities, their movies and the times in which they were made. Each director has his or her own reasons to wear something, even though practicality is many times at the forefront. In their natural setting, making movies, they must feel like themselves, but also that they are in command, sometimes maybe of something that can not be tamed, nor even controlled – their dreams.

Read instead… in print is about a good book about cinema or filmmakers. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.