The Story of Adele H., The Wild Child, and Day for Night

I never want to see the Story of Adele H. again. As a woman, it was really painful for me to watch the story of another woman who is so pathetic, so dependent on a man, and who acts selfishly toward her family. I understand that it's based on a true story, and while I may have liked reading about it on wikipedia, I don't want to watch a film about it. The whole film can be summed up in one simple phrase, as spoken by the man Adele stalks to Adele, "You're ridiculous!" Adele's identity is defined by her relationship to a man, her father (she will always be known as Victor Hugo's daughter), and she wants to breaks free of that and define herself. But, she is too weak to do that, so she tries to reform her identity around another man. As in all Truffaut movies, people only want what they can't have, so of course he can't love her back. An interesting point brought up in class was Jared's idea that Truffaut trusts the visual more than the written or spoken word. When Adele reveals her identity to the hypnotist, she does not speak her name aloud, but writes it in the dust on the glass.

The Wild Child really reminded me of the Elephant Man, and I wonder if Lynch saw this film and was inspired by it. Both films are in black-and-white, and they're about doctors who try to civilize another human being. Also, both doctors go through a crisis in which they wonder if they're doing things for the right reasons. As Chris pointed out in class, the film, although it seems like it wouldn't be autobiographical, as some parallels to Truffaut's own life. Both Truffaut and the wild child were illegitimate, and were treated badly by their parents. Truffaut plays a role in Victor's life that is similar to Bazin's role in his own. Bazin helped to "civilize" Truffaut in a way. The story does move slowly and does not try to gloss over how tedious the learning process can be. There are some jumps in time, but there is no montage of progress (that I can remember at least). The story of the wild child isn't really a story of success in terms of how much he learned as in reading and writing, but I think it is in terms of how much he learned to connect with other human beings, which I would say is more important (not to be too sappy).

Watching Day for Night was an experience, because I've never seen anything dubbed except MXC and kung-fu movies. The dubbing was really awful, but it added a layer of humor to the film. I think the film does a really good job in showing the joy and agony of filmmaking, and makes the cast seem like a big family. To paraphrase what Kate said in class, the film shows you how the truth behind the magic of film, but that just makes the film all the more magical. Now, everytime I see a shot of someone driving a car from the front, I think of Day for Night. After running into all kinds of problems in the first half of the film (that they are making), most of the second half is glossed over with a montage of progress. I kind of hate montages that are the turning points of movies, because they make me think of every made-for-TV Disney movie ever, but I understand that when things come together when working on a film, it probably is a big blur. A couple more things: When Truffaut is sleeping and we see the images transposed over him, I thought that was a little silly. I guess it's supposed to remind the viewer that the director never leaves his work, even when he is sleeping. Finally, the relationship between the young actress and the old doctor was interesting. At first, it's just kind of gross, because of the age difference. When she cheats on him, I had sympathy for him because he seems like this kindly old man, but then again, he did leave his whole family for some young actress. I was happy for them to be together in the end, but I still wonder what that storyline was doing in the film.