Crecia C. Swaim
Truffaut is celebrated for making films about adolescence and its difficulties with beauty and clarity. He is known to draw from his own troubled youth, which is important to share with students. Although we surely need to show students examples of good behavior and what is proper, it is equally important that we show them examples of people who weren't the best examples to follow when they were young, but who went on to work hard and become successful, presumably by doing the right thing. Our children need to know that it is never too late to succeed, and that people do grow and develop at their own rate, the best way they know how. François Truffaut is as an excellent example of a child who had great difficulty at home and in school, yet grew up to become a successful, (self-) educated adult. He helps us consider how one's family situation can contribute to one's delinquency, as well as how ingesting, responding to, and ultimately creating art, can serve as a means of escaping, and a method of coping with, adversity.
François Truffaut was born on February 6, 1932, the illegitimate child of Janine de Monferrand; he never knew his biological father.(5) Just before he turned two years old, François's mother married a man named Roland Truffaut, who adopted the boy; François grew up believing Roland was his biological father. For the first three years of his life, François lived with a wet nurse and did not see his mother very frequently. Before François' third birthday the couple had a child of their own, who died after two months. This upset the couple so much that they went to see François even more rarely, and François began to waste away, growing thinner and sicker from neglect. It was at this time that Janine's mother, Geneviève de Monferrand, decided to take François into her home. He was so sick and undernourished, it seemed to be a matter of life or death.
François did pretty well living with his grandparents; although his grandfather was very strict, his grandmother was more nurturing. He read a
lot
, something he had done and would continue to do with passion for the rest of his life. Because he was still so small, he was nicknamed
Papillon
and
Farfadet
(
Butterfly
and
Elf
). In 1939, when François was seven years old, France entered World War II. That year he lived in Brittany and attended school there; he also picked up some bad behaviors that he brought back to Paris the following year. Over the next several years, his behavior became more and more problematic, both in and out of school. He did not pay attention to his lessons, disrespected his teachers, skipped school, lied, and started stealing.
When François was ten years old, his grandmother died, and his parents were finally forced to take the child into their home. François' mother was especially unhappy about this, and quarreled with him often. Although François always suspected he might be adopted, he had thought his mother was the adoptive parent. When he was twelve years old, he found out that he was adopted by Roland, not Janine. Somehow, this further alienated him from his mother, and brought him closer to his father.
Although the family moved several times after this, François continued to sleep in the entryway on a make-shift bed, as he never had his own room; he always felt like an imposition, especially to his mother. He was left home alone a lot, since he did not share the family enthusiasm for hiking (that was how Janine and Roland had met.) At the end of his first year living with his parents, François was doing so poorly that he spent the next several years in and out of different schools, getting into trouble with his good friend Robert. Neither boy had a strong family life, so they created their own little family, and became intensely loyal to each other. He continued to follow a pattern of rebellion and escapism; reading and watching movies were a frequent manner of escape for him. In his first film,
Les 400 Coups (The 400 Blows)
, you can see much of his youth in the youth of the main character Antoine.(6)
At the age of fourteen, François began to work. He gave his earnings to his parents, who would give him back a third of it, for pocket money. This was post-war France, Paris was being rebuilt, and François was ready to work. He also saw many films during these adolescent years; he is quoted as saying he saw three films a day and read three books a week. Not bad for a juvenile delinquent! François and his friends started up a Film Club, but could not pay all the costs of it. He got into huge debt, which his father paid off, after forcing him to admit, in writing, to everything he owed and everything he had stolen. Although François promised to change his ways, he continued to accumulate debt, and his father brought him to the police station, with the signed confession of debts and thefts, and asked that they send him to a detention center, which was legal according to French Civil Code.(7) From here, François became even more alienated from his family. After he served his time, the psychologist there helped connect François with André Bazin, a celebrated French filmmaker who would become a father figure to Truffaut, and would help him (slowly, and with many mistakes along the way) transition into the film world as an adult and a successful filmmaker.(8)