The Wild Child (François Truffaut, 1970) aka L'enfant sauvage
In a French forest in 1798, a child is found who cannot walk, speak, read or write. A doctor becomes interested in the child and patiently attempts to civilize him.
Jean-Pierre Cargol, François Truffaut, Françoise Seigner
There are many fascinating philsophical things to be said about this film ... but not by me. I am too busy being appalled by one of my heroes making a narrative film with no actors in it. There are people in it playing parts, but neither of the principals had acted before, and both are pretty bad at it. By the way, I haven't read anyone commenting on casting a gypsy boy as the 'savage'; I think it could be seen as something like racist.
I came to this partly from Herzog's Kaspar Hauser, hoping to learn a bit more about unsocialised human beings, but all I learnt is that Truffaut's career as auteur is patchier than I thought, and that on a bad project he could be nearly as uninteresting as Robert Bresson (tho not quite as boring as Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub).
Garry Gillard | New: 27 March, 2017 | Now: 17 August, 2018