Truffaut vs Bond

I was reading an old book of OMNI articles today and in a section on FAHRENHEIT 451, it mentioned that Truffaut HATED, absolutely hated, DR NO. He had intended to do FAHRENHEIT as a very high-tech looking film, but DR NO stole his thunder, so he went anti-future with FAHRENHEIT, to very little good effect. There are quotes from his diary about how DR NO ruined the next two decades of movies.

Truffaut also wrote in his Hitchcock/Truffaut book he writes "the James Bond series, which is nothing else than a rough caricature of all Hitchcock's work, and of North by Northwest in particular."

It doesn't affect me one way or another. Truffaut was entitled to his opinion just as each of us are entitled to ours.

I'll just echo the thoughts from another thread...



"Shuck it, Frenchie. Shuck it long and shuck it hard."

Prince Kamal Khan wrote:

Truffaut also wrote in his Hitchcock/Truffaut book he writes "the James Bond series, which is nothing else than a rough caricature of all Hitchcock's work, and of North by Northwest in particular."

I did laugh at this when I read the book. But, he's not too far off.

Truffaut's hatred toward DR. NO might parallel recent hatred toward STAR WARS. Big blockbusters with a large fan base do have a way of taking the spotlight away from films that truly deserve recognition. They're also produced purely for the sake of generating as much cash as possible, rather than for artistic purposes. For an auteur like Truffaut, I could see how it'd make his blood boil.

On the other hand, I think FAHRENHEIT 451 is the only film to blame for FAHRENHEIT 451's lack of acclaim. While I like the film, I think it was clear that Truffaut was entering some unsteady ground, in regards to the language barriers and his lead actor. It was a good experiment, though, and even his idol, Sir Alfred, had some of his own failed experiments. But, Truffaut's two films following FAHRENHEIT were two of his best--he recovered quickly.

colly wrote:

I'll just echo the thoughts from another thread...



"Shuck it, Frenchie. Shuck it long and shuck it hard."

Nothing would have stopped Truffaut from doing Fahrenheit 451 more high-tech though. If he'd considered Dr No to have been popular, which it was, then why not try to make his own film even better and even more hi-tech? As much as I love some of his films (and I like 451 too to a decent extent), it just sounds a bit bitchy these comments. Though there were definite and IMO undeniable Hitchcock influences on early Bond, he's right there.

Hard to argue against the heavy influence that North by Northwest had on those early Bonds though.

Dr No was hardly a blockbuster, Brown. Low budget even by British standards.

Truffaut was highly invested in building up Hitchcock--it's unsurprising that he'd denigrate the Bond series as being derivative of the Master, even though Hitchcock drew upon the same heritage in thrillers that Fleming did.

Avarice wrote:

Dr No was hardly a blockbuster, Brown. Low budget even by British standards.

I understand. That was a godawful comparison.

I must've been sober when I wrote it.

To me Fahrenheit's low key style is it's strongest trait. It put Bradbury's story from the far future to a much closer and more familiar setting. I doubt I would like a more futuristic version. Can't understand Truffaut's complaint at all, it's not as if DN had been the influential film of its time, neither was it particularly futuristic. Those set pieces surely didn't spoil Truffaut's freedom to make whatever film he preferred.

I think it was DR NO, but DR NO in retrospect -- remember, these things got reissued theatrically like crazy, so after GF and TB came out, folks probably looked at DR NO's spider room in a different light (the control room in DR NO, for all its inventiveness, still makes me think of a basketball court at times.)

In books on 60s films like MEDIUM COOL, I'm pretty sure that Bond is cited for Hunt's jump-cut editing style as much as the Adam gleam, and together these things probably made the films seems from the future as much as any other story element. Maybe Bond just co-opted elements that Truffaut would have otherwise drawn upon for 451 (I know I was annoyed when Star Trek TNG would use a great SF idea and just throw it away -- like the Dyson Sphere in the Scotty episode -- when I had great notions that FOCUSED on the SF element. Truffaut probably didn't want to be second or seventeenth in line. SW coopted so much DUNE imagery that DUNE seemed llike a SW retread to some (not me), and I'm sure there are countless other examples that I can't remember because the muscle relaxant for my back is starting to worrrrkkkkkk ...

Ah, that didn't occur to me. That's surely true, in retrospect DN and FRWL must have looked quite prophetic and indeed ground-breaking. Of course a director would have been aware of the trend and the general influence of the hype in 1964 and 1965. Well, if his vision of Fahrenheit was really so different from the film we've got then he should maybe have ignored Bond and just made what he felt was right.

Agreed. It wasn't like the looks for the future were all used up by '66, otherwise we wouldn't have Kubrick's 2001.