‘On ne peut décrire cela, il faut voir combien de beauté, combien de belles choses il y a ici, au centre du monde.’ –Bela Bartok
On 21 October 1984, François Truffaut dies of brain cancer. He is 52 years old. Jean-Luc Godard does not attend the funeral, which, in Montmartre Cemetery, brings together the whole family of French Cinema. For ten years the two filmmakers have been enemies. Since 1973 the two former friends, leaders of the New Wave, have not seen each other. (…)
Letter from Jean-Luc Godard to Truffaut end of May 1973: “Probably nobody will call you a liar. Well, I will. It’s not more of an insult than ‘fascist.’ It’s a critique. And it’s the absence of critique in such films, your film, and in the films of Chabrol, Ferreri, Verneuil, Delannoy, Renoir, etc., which I complain about.” (…)
Truffaut’s answer to Jean-Luc Godard, June 1973: (…) Fake! Dandy! Show off! You’ve always been a show off and a fake, like when you sent a telegram to de Gaulle for his prostate. Fake, when you accused Chauvet of being corrupt because he was the last, the only one to resist you! Fake when you practice the amalgam, when you treat Renoir and Verneuil as the same, as equivalent.
