Word: truffauts
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...WOMAN NEXT DOOR Directed by François Truffaut Screenplay by François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman and Jean Aurel
...respects the charm of the quotidian, finds in its little dramas wisdom and absurdity, sadness and folly-and, above all, liveliness. This cheering, but unsappy outlook is much in evidence as the younger generation of French directors, like Diane Kurys and Jean Charles Tacchella, crawls out from under Francois Truffaut's overcoat. It seems to be an almost exclusively Gallic view, making one want to send the entire American motion picture industry to sum mer school in France...
...COURSE, in the end Raiders is a director's movie. Aside from keeping pace with the plot, there is little to be done for the actors short of giving wonderfully telling looks. That is not to cut anyone down. Everyone, from Belloq (who comes off looing like Francois Truffaut's alter ego) or Toht have distinctive characteristics that are easily enough identified, and a hint of more. But if more were delivered, it would only weigh the movie down. For it is Spielberg's sense of timing that propels Raiders into the realm of the magnificent. He is a master...
...against this background, Truffaut does no more than create a melodrama himself. Essentially, the film follows characters one ostensibly knows about--the resistance fighters, the underground populace--but Truffaut refuses to examine their motivation. Despite remarkable performances by Catherine Deneuve as Mrs. Steiner, and Gerald Depardieu as the leading man turned resistance fighter, Truffaut refuses to follow any one character beyond the confines of their theater. And in the end, when Truffaut resorts to a cliched surprise ending, he undoes any unnerving elements that have gone before. The film is forever on the verge of going deeper, of pulling something...
Throughout the film, there is a deliberate refusal to judge any of the characters in political terms. Truffaut is perhaps only interested in showing the real lives which existed in spite of the occupation. But this distant stance, this refusal to do more than hint at the dread, eventually condemns the film to the realm of the superficial. It is the equivalent of a period piece, a nice love story in an interesting time, and one leaves the film with nothing more than the memory of some beautiful visual scenes--something which seems superficial in the face of the subject...