Masterpieces of the 60s: Part II
Picking up where we last left off... 2. Fran ç ois Truffaut's Jules et Jim In 1973, Jean-Luc Godard accused Truffaut of having made a dishonest film -- Day for Night -- and attacked his inability to make genuine films. As close as they had been, these two giants of French cinema would never speak again. (Truffaut died in 1984 and Godard turned 87 earlier this month.) Stanley Kubrick, perhaps the most influential American auteur of all time, regarded Truffaut as being one tier below Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and David Lean. But I'm not here to assess let alone rank any of my heroes. To me, they all reside at the very top pantheon of filmmakers. I bring up Godard and Kubrick's assessment of the French auteur because their assessment illuminates the difference between the two types of directorial genius. The first runs with intuition and calibrates it with intellect. The second has their intellect at the helm with their intuition a...