What’s more interesting than feral children? According to my research, there was some kind of King somewhere like Spain and he told some nuns at the local orphanage to not speak to the next 10 babies
NOW SHOWING: NOVEMBER 14-20: 1:00, 5:30, 7:15
What’s more interesting than feral children? According to my research, there was some kind of King somewhere like Spain and he told some nuns at the local orphanage to not speak to the next 10 babies and not touch them or anything, only feed and change them. He figured their first words would be “The language of God” or some shit. They all died. The Truffaut movie is about a feral child called Victor of Aveyron and his was the first case we realized feral children can’t really be helped (their brains are mush). A young medical student named Jean Marc Gaspard busted his ass to help this kid but only got him walking upright. He couldn’t really get past tricks you could teach an animal. That’s because the boy’s brain was a brown liver. Being an aristocratic prick, Gaspard soon grew tired of the boy and left him to the maids the same way he had originally been left to the wolves. Eventually, the boy could only speak maid. Ah, those were crazy times. There hasn’t been a report of a Feral child since 2008. Wait, what!?
Anyway, please check out this movie at Film Forum. We saw it last night and it ruled though we had smoked a rather large spliff right before so that may have enhanced the experience. Today and tomorrow are the last two days you can see it.
Here’s the press release…
The Wild Child (1970), François Truffaut’s drama about the education of a boy found living alone in the wilderness in 18th century France, based on a true story, will run at Film Forum from Friday, November 7 through Thursday, November 13 (one week) in a new 35mm print. Showtimes daily are at 1:00, 2:45, 4:30, 6:15, 8:00, and 9:45.
The year is 1798, and farmers in the south of France, on the hunt for a predator, instead find a naked young boy, presumably grown up in the wild without human contact. As the latest sensation, he’s paraded before fee-paying gawkers at the institute for the deaf and dumb, while Dr. Itard (played by director Truffaut himself) debates with a colleague: is the boy a purely natural human, a tabula rasa, or simply an idiot? Itard takes the boy into his own home in an attempt to educate and civilize him.
Based on an actual case, and with its voiceover narration (an adaptation of Itard’s two reports into diary form), this is Truffaut’s nearest approach to documentary, with Nestor Almendros’ striking b&w photography evoking the earliest days of the cinema, and a much-imitated all-Vivaldi score. As l’enfant sauvage, Jean-Pierre Cargol, a French Roma boy picked from over 2,500 hopefuls, is alternately ferocious and docile, while as Dr. Itard, Truffaut is superb. (Alfred Hitchcock wrote Truffaut asking for “the autograph of the actor who plays the doctor, he is so wonderful,” while Steven Spielberg was so impressed by the director’s compassionate performance that he cast Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.) Cast partly because he realized he’d be directing the boy within the film, Truffaut imposed on himself a “no smiling” rule – he lapses briefly once – to attain a kind of gravity, but then this only reinforces his ruthlessly unsentimental treatment of potentially treacly material, even as the inevitable question (“Was it worth it?”) arises.
The Wild Child is dedicated to Jean-Pierre Léaud, who played Truffaut’s alter ego Antoine Doinel in four films.
“MARVELOUS!”
– Alfred Hitchcock
“As lucid and wryly witty a film as you could wish for… A beautiful use of simple techniques – black-and-white photography, Vivaldi music, even devices as outmoded as the iris – give it a very refreshing quality. DEEPLY MOVING.”
– Time Out (London)
“Unlike any other film Truffaut has ever made, yet only Truffaut could have made it. It is a lovely, pure film. A CLASSIC!”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times
“Truffaut’s most thoughtful statement on his favorite subject: The way young people grow up, explore themselves, and attempt to function creatively in the world. Truffaut places his personal touch on every frame of the film. So often movies keep our attention by flashy tricks and cheap melodrama; it is an intellectually cleansing experience to watch this intelligent and hopeful film.”
– Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
“Suffused with Truffaut’s radiant love for the movies’ beginnings, when everything was being done for the first time, when the language was learned. It has a miraculous kind of balance: between freedom and control, originality and homage, the discovery of new experience and the contemplation of the past…Truffaut gives us an image of himself as both master and student, the image that contains all we need to know of him.”
– Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker
“CRITIC’S PICK: A gorgeous new print!”
– Time Out New York
1970 | 85 minutes | b&w
NOV 7-14 at 1:00, 2:45, 4:30, 6:15, 8:00, 9:45
A FILM DESK/HEATHEN FILMS RELEASE
geez, watch more truffaut movies guys they’ve been around for decades!
That bit about “the laungauge of God” reminds me of the first part of the New York Trilogy. Maybe Austere was referring to the same incident?
I remember first learning about feral children in my sociology class in 11th grade. My mind was blown. Then I saw some stuff on TLC about it?????????? so crazy
The guys in that movie poster have awesome shoes. Nohomo.
“geez, watch more truffaut movies guys they’ve been around for decades!”
YEESH!
wowzeers, comments are on fire today
no homo
film snobs up top just killed my interest in seeing this film.
i often wonder with what logic these bores decide to act like such douches. whether its a party or a comments board, your comments do not make you seem cool or smart. in fact, as i said, you seem like a douche. fuck off with yourself.