François Truffaut: love for cinema, the cinema of love - Part 3: The Antoine Doinel "cycle" (original) (raw)

Truffaut's cinema is made of love, in all its possible meanings, and precisely for this reason it requires, in order to be appreciated, that the spectator approaches it with an attitude that is able first of all to grasp the emotional range of the images: as if it were necessary to treat the film with the same love with which it was conceived. But love is, at the same time, the main theme, the central focus, the most intimate and authentic inspiration of Truffaut's films. It is a feeling that involves all dimensions, from family to social, from romantic to sexual. This Dossier takes a close look at the director’s filmography, investigating its three main dimensions: after a General introduction (Part 1), we deal with the ways Truffaut has filmed childhood and adolescence (Part 2), the Antoine Doinel “cycle” (the mythical character from his first feature film, The 400 blows)(Part 3), and finally the sentimental “triangles” and the love obsessions, with such masterpieces as Jules and Jim and The woman next door (Part 4). The four parts are all available at Academia.edu and at www.cinemafocus.eu