Truffaut & Godard: "Two in the Wave"

"No filmmakers were closer than Jean- Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, and no falling out was more bitter or more public.



The documentary “Two in the Wave,” available on DVD from Lorber Films, details what went right and wrong in the friendship of these great French New Wave directors who changed the face of cinema. The story, fleshed out with clips from more than 30 films and rare interviews with both men, is as galvanizing as any of their movies.



Though Godard and Truffaut shared an early infatuation with film, their backgrounds were starkly different.



Godard was the son of a doctor and a banker’s daughter. Truffaut grew up as a working-class truant, spending time in reformatories and prison for stealing.



He used the proceeds from one of his heists to pay off the debts of a film club he started at 16. Movies were more than a refuge for the lonely Truffaut; they were his salvation.



“Two in the Wave” includes a photo of Godard and Truffaut in 1949, when they were teenagers. It’s an extraordinarily evocative image because it seems so offhanded.



As young men they spent endless hours watching classics at the legendary Cinematheque Francaise in Paris.



They worked as maverick film critics for the seminal magazine Cahiers du Cinema alongside future New Wave directors Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer, and shared a passion to overturn the studio-engineered romantic realism of the day."



Full piece HERE.