Now that his “reissue a Godard every couple months so as to build up years of positive press and new prints” strategy has paid off with one of the year’s biggest retros, Film Forum repertory programmer and Rialto Pictures head Bruce Goldstein seems to be repeating the strategy with François Truffaut. Following this fall’s Shoot the Piano Player comes Truffaut’s The Wild Child, starting today and continuing through the 13th. The L’s Nick McCarthy says:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau by way of PBS, François Truffaut’s patient and philosophizing, yet family-friendly, film documents the attempts of Dr. Jean Itard to civilize a feral child. Observing the idea of man in a state of nature and his necessary education, the film succeeds in showing that Truffaut is very close to this subject: keep in mind, he dedicated the film to his most frequent actor-collaborator, Jean-Pierre Leaud, whom Truffaut taught the language of cinema. Ultimately, The Wild Child is about the satisfaction of providing an education — whether it be for behavioral or artistic edification. The form reflects the content: what begins as coolly academic evolves into a beautiful study of warmth and understanding.
See also the L’s Nicolas Rapold’s review, in the Village Voice.