Menu
4 Fabulous Songs From Truffaut Films
By Erin Harris | Music
I was just thinking about framboise the drink and how some people say fram-BWA, but it’s fram-bwa-ze.
How do I know that?
Cuz of Boby Lapointe’s cameo in Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player.
So that got me thinking about my other favorite Truffaut film songs. I’m a huge Truffaut fan, and I have a theory that a mark of any great film is the inclusion of a great song, which you’ll see more about below.
I know my next two favorite Truffaut film songs are on YouTube… but I’m really hoping that my SUPER favorite exists on YouTube too.
It didn’t used to.
So we’ll see.
This is the first Truffaut film I knowingly watched. I requested it from the library after viewing what turned out to be his Farenheit 451.
It was love ever after for me with Truffaut, especially once I saw this warm scene of musical accord.
The last in the Antoine Doinel series, L’Amour en Fuite is a bittersweet finale that seals my fondness for the character that Jean-Pierre Léaud played on and off from childhood in 1959 to adulthood in 1979.
This catchy pop tune theme always makes me happy. (And all these songs are great for singing along with if your French is shit and you need to practice.)
YES! I’m thrilled this one is on YouTube too. It’s so hard to find. And I don’t know what it’s called.
The soul-piercing composition is coupled with what has to be one of the best-edited sequences in all of cinema.
Listen to the gentle creep of the intro as the camera inches toward poor Adele, daughter of Victor Hugo, crazed with obsession, praying before an altar she has devoted to a man who doesn’t love her.
Watch as the emotion of the song builds and the camera penetrates her enormous eyes. Savor the masterful editing as the camera and the clarinet (?) zoom in on the proud captain in tandem.
It’s all interrupted for a minute by Adele’s desperate ramblings, and then the crescendo rises with the rage of the sea.
And! Starting around 5:23, do you hear that bass sound that’s like a slowed Under Pressure? I love how great musical minds think alike, even when separated by about 60 years.
To conclude, this clip has little to do with Truffaut.
But like Truffaut’s films, The Night of the Hunter convinces me that a mark of a great film is the inclusion of a great song.
Listen to Pearl’s tune about the pretty fly.
And talk about one of the best sequences in all of cinema. With The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton created the greatest Huck Finn film that was never made.
In fact, although Hunter is unrelated to Truffaut, Truffaut did review it in his film criticism days. He wrote:
“It makes us fall in love again with an experimental cinema that truly experiments, and a cinema of discovery that, in fact, discovers.”
Which is what Truffaut himself went on to do as a director, and a chooser of music.
Top image from Wikimedia Commons