There’s never been much consensus about the value of Francois Truffaut’s work after the first five or six years of his career, the most commonly accepted view being that after the his key intervention in the Cannes Festival protests of 1968, Enfant Terrible’s old principles seemed to row back and soften during the 1970s. This was strongly evident in The Films in My Life – Truffaut’s curated and self-edited collection of criticism from 1955 and his time at Cahiers Du Cinema years, to his later career in 1974. The book omitted nearly all of the major attacks on La qualite française (The Tradition of Quality), and Cinema de Papa that served as manifestos for the emerging New Wave and first bought him to attention, in favour of wholly positive pieces. Perhaps because of this, but also to point out how flimsy and trivial Truffaut’s cinema had become and how far behind the rest of the “Big Five” of Cahiers he had fallen, some over the last few decades have brought comparisons between his works and the daring experimentation of Godard and Rivette, or the complete and perfect moral universes of Chabrol and Rohmer (which were as strong in their own ways as Ozu’s).
It’s a rather harsh picture as although Truffaut never made anything like Rivette’s Out 1 (1971), and Celine and Julie Go Boating (1874), Godard’s Ici et Ailleurs (1976), and Histoire(s) Du Cinema (1988-1998), or Chabrol’s La Ceremonie (1995), he was still more than capable of intense self-examination and creating admirable, fresh work. La Chambre Verte (1978), is perhaps one of the most astounding acts of self-immolation in cinema history, a burning up of the museum of self, the chapel of romantic obsession and the altar of heroes by a film-maker always in thrall to his influences and his leading ladies. The Story of Adele H, possibly the other finest of his post-60s films, belongs to that same tradition in Truffaut’s oeuvre to which the 1978 work is the resolution and exorcism.
Isabelle Adjani plays the role of Adele Hugo – the fifth child (and second daughter), of renowned French author and playwright Victor Hugo. She’s a compulsive diary-keeper who pursues the object of her desire, Lieutenant Albert Pinson (played by Bruce Robinson, who would later create Withnail and I in 1987), to Nova Scotia and beyond – even though he’s uninterested in her. The story is primarily drawn from the diaries Adele kept, but a key visual influence is actually the German and French director Max Ophuls, and it can be seen in the languorous tracking shots that penetrate the walls of country estates or scale their facades to peer through windows (as with the brothel in the 1952 French comedy-drama anthology Le Plaisir).
It’s a powerful work, but not necessarily in the way that one would expect as it foregoes easy identification or familiar representation.
Unlike any of Ophuls’ doomed heroines, Adele is outrageously and shamelessly manipulative – a schemer willing to lay waste to the plans of others as much as hers have been destroyed, and bearing in mind Truffaut’s rather trite and patronising message in Day For Night that “women are magic”, she’s a tragic, yet magic figure. A believer in hypnotism and mesmerism, Adele is like a swirl of red in the blue night, stalking across gardens disguised in Feulliade-esque cross-dress like a white zombie in Barbados. Truffaut keeps Adele at a distance even while maintaining an intimate focus – allowing Adjani to work prodigiously through every variation of desperation, anguish, passion and feverish self-reflection, and letting us examine her simply by watching (which, in a sense, is like a virtuoso musician performing their final conservatoire recital before a panel of judges).
The film is loose, elliptical, and oddly fleet-footed, suggesting a spontaneity and imagination that wasn’t always apparent after Jules and Jim (1962) – which isn’t necessarily due to a lack of rigor. Instead, Truffaut seems to be searching for a way to give form to a certain fatalistic momentum that should be familiar to anyone who’s their lives have crumbled due to the cruel and relentless unravelling of disastrous coincidence, awful discovery, ill-judged decision making or sheer bad luck. The moments of disorientating strangeness and the push to a destination the film barely dwells upon once it’s arrived reflect these metaphysical concerns, giving the sense that obsession is a force that drives and is driven by us, and can overtake us like the wind that pulls too hard on raised sails. It’s a powerful work, but not necessarily in the way that one would expect as it foregoes easy identification or familiar representation, sacrificing the usual polite baggage of the costume drama to work more like a nightmare – a pitiless descent that you can only wish you’re able to turn away from.
Radiance’s new Blu-Ray release is a welcome improvement on MGM’s ancient bare-bones disc, and great care has been taken with the lustrousness and sombreness of Nestor Almendros’ typically enchanted (and oddly eerie), cinematography. There’s an interview with Almendros alongside others with Truffaut and Adjani from the archives, and an illuminating consideration from critic Phuong Le.
The Story of Adele H is out now on Radiance Films Blu Ray
Billy’s Archive – The Story of Adele H (1977)
Discover more from The Geek Show
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
