François Truffaut: The Lost Secret

8. Words and Things: The Wild Child (1970), The Story of Adèle H. (1975)

207 At the beginning of The Wild Child, the young boy, who still does not have a name, is placed in an institution for deafmutes . That night, in the dormitory, being unable to bear the sheets and mattress, he hides under the bed to sleep. At the end of The Story of Adèle H., Victor Hugo’s daughter, who no longer knows who she is, takes refuge in an asylum for the night and, terrified that someone might steal from her, goes to sleep under her bed to protect her suitcase. These paired images mark the link between these two characters , one of whom is condemned to live on this side, and the other on the other side, of the world of exchanges and communication. Even the way in which they sleep is marked with the sign of exclusion . Their narrative destinies reflect one another like an image in a mirror. Referring to the life of Adèle Hugo, Truffaut said: “This biography moved me greatly. Perhaps because it displays the other side of the coin as far as The Wild Child is concerned. Like the child of l’Aveyron, Adèle has a problem of identity, but here it is of the opposite kind, given that she is the daughter of the most famous man in the world.”1 Victor undergoes a difficult process aimed at rooting him in society, while each scene shows Adèle drawing a little further away from her fellow human beings to retreat into madness. For each of them, language manifests the malfunction of their relationship with the world. Victor will never be able to master the principle that unites words with objects; Adèle ends up drowning herself in an ocean of writing, the proliferation ofwhichdoesnotrelatetoanyreality.Thingswithoutwords,wordswithWords and Things The Wild Child (1970) The Story of Adèle H. (1975) 208 François Truffaut: The Lost Secret out things, the dislocation of the system of signification upon which the very notion of culture is based gives rise to an austere reflection in these two films that is extended into the nature of their respective systems of representation. Inspired by “authentic” histories, as stated in their respective credit sequences, both of them illustrate the articulation of the real and the imaginary, of the written record and of fiction. The Wild Child (1970) The Wild Child, the second film in the trilogy Truffaut devoted to the theme of childhood, addresses the question of origins–of language, of communication,andofculture.Itisafilmabout“firsttimes”:“Thischild has grown up removed from civilization, so much so that everything he does in the film is being done for the first time.”2 It was also the first time that Truffaut had acted in one of his own films, marking a reversal in the playofidentifications:“UpuntilThe Wild Child,whenever I had children in my films, I would identify myself with them; then in it, for the first time, I identified myself with the adult, with the father.”3 His decision to play Doctor Itard, who undertakes to educate the wild child, and whose two reports are faithfully reproduced in the film,4 was, said Truffaut, the “trigger” (déclic)5 that persuaded him to film this story: “From the day I decided to play Itard, the film assumed an all-engrossing purpose for me.”6 As was typically the case, every time he was preoccupied with an idea so deeply that he could not bear to discuss it, Truffaut did not mention this to anyone. When the shooting of the film was already in progress, he wrote to his faithful friend and collaborator since Jules and Jim, Jean Gruault, who was the co-author of the screenplay with him: “Forgive me for having been secretive about my intention to act the role of Itard; I was trying to keep it secret until the last moment.”7 This film also marks the beginning of a remarkable collaboration between Truffaut and Nestor Almendros, “one of the greatest directors of photography in the world,”8 who would work on eight other films by the director. In his book Un homme à la caméra, Almendros provides the following information: The Wild Child is a homage to the photography of silent films . . . Their style, without any touching-up, had the precision of a fine drawing that has Words and Things 209 disappeared today . . . The techniques of silent cinema achieved an exceptional degree of...