BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: François Truffaut’s last word.

FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT was one of the most influential French New Wave directors, and consequently one of the most influential directors of all-time. His Antoine Doinel series helped herald a personal cinema previously unseen in world cinema, and his fervent canonisations of previous filmmakers did much to contribute to auteur theory and the importance of the director in the filmmaking process. However, he was also one of the most conventional of the New Wave directors – stylistically and in terms of politics and narrative. However, that’s not to say he’s dull; my favourite Truffaut film, Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) features constant tonal shifts and homages all told in a very engaging story. Arguably this is the same territory that Truffaut returns to in his final feature, Finally Sunday! (also known as Faithfully Yours).

The story is based on Charles Williams’ novel The Long Saturday Night, but Truffaut inverts the protagonist. His focus is Barbara Becker (Fanny Ardant), a suffering secretary in a real estate company. Her boss Julien Vercel (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is suddenly the prime suspect of a murder – a man who had been sleeping with his wife has been found dead. As bodies start piling up, Becker is drawn towards Vercel, and seeks to try and find out the truth.

This film is abundant with references and homages, which Truffaut manages to twist in very subtle ways (if you can recognise the references, they add a wonderful layer to the film). In particular, Truffaut was a great admirer of Alfred Hitchcock. Truffaut takes the almost laughably melodramatic relationship dynamics of Hitchcock (which Hitchcock did so damn well) and uses it to form the basis of the plot. He also makes the plot-holes ridiculous too (much like Hitchcock films if you were to actually dissect them). Truffaut knowingly casts a brunette, unlike Hitchcock’s famous predilection for blondes, but then teases Becker’s character for not being blonde. He refers to Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil with Charlton Heston’s gloriously melodramatic line, “do you realise I haven’t kissed you in an hour” and adds a touch of French impetuosity to it – “do you realise I haven’t kissed you in two minutes”. He gets Becker to ask a movie attendant if Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is a “love film”.

Finally Sunday! also features constant shifts in tone much like Tirez Sur le Pianiste. There are moments of humour (there’s a classic scene involving an entrance into an amateur production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame) but also shocking violence. The constant tonal shifts are highly enjoyable, it’s Truffaut’s way of capturing real-life. But with all the filmic references and the playfulness in tone, this is evidence of a filmmaker who loved his craft, but even more than that, loved the language of cinema.