“The Soft Skin” (“La peau douce”), is a black-and-white
progressive romantic mystery film by Francois Truffaut, from 1964. It somewhat reminds one of Hitchcock, but is
more character-driven and less situation-dependent. It’s loosely based on a story by Jean-Louis
Richard.
The story depicts a popular publisher, author and lecturer,
married with a stable family, falling for another woman, gradually inspiring
the jealousy of his wife who will blow him away with a shotgun in a Paris
restaurant in the movie’s final scene. The movie is witty and funny, playing on the
heterosexual social norms of the early 60s, and the viewer enjoys the trip to
ultimate catastrophe.
The publisher is Pierre Lachenay (Jean DeSailly), and as the
movie opens he rushes to the airport for a flight to Lisbon, to lecture. He talks the airline into lowering the stairs
for him so he can get on the plane. This
would never be allowed today. (I flew to
Amsterdam from the US in 1999 and 2001, and both times flew to other cities
immediately, using similar steps.) The
stewardess is Nicole (Francoise Dorleac).
There’s a lot of interesting hanky panky in the hotel immediately (with
phone and telegraph technology the way it was in the 60s). And there’s
interesting subject matter in the conversations.. Pierre talks about Balzac, how the 19th
century writer bought his own publishing company and printer to have control of
his own message (sounds like the forerunner of today’s controversies with
self-published books). A succeeding
telegram is odd: It reads “Je vous aime” when the familiar “tu” would sound
right (“Je t’aime”).
The movie runs around France after he returns (including
Reims) but eventually his middle-aged wife Franca (Nelly Benedetti) becomes
more angered and the immature, soft-skinned (but nubile) competition.
The witty music score by Georges Delerue helps maintain a
sense of suspense and building menace. As for the title of the film, it's supposed to apply to "women", right? Not so much any more.
The DVD from the Criterion Collection and Janus Films
includes a 10-minute short, “The Complexity of Influence” (2015), narrated by
Kent Jones (director of “Hitchcock/Truffaut”, Dec. 16), explaining how Truffaut
was influenced by everyone and was at one time someone of a bad boy.
There follows a 30-minute short “Monsieur Truffaut Meets Mr.
Hitchcock”, 1999, by Robert Fischer, which is similar to the Jones feature
reviewed before. The short talks about
the difference between character and situational screenwriting, and then
explains a lot of Hitchcock’s techniques particularly in “The Birds” (1963),
where the idea is continuity of action (even from the viewpoint of one of the
birds). Finally, there is a “making of”
short with some old interviews of Truffaut himself.
Picture: construction tunnel in Washington DC (my shot) but very Truffaut-like. The director makes a lot of ordinary indoor and street scenes, without making the viewer "travel" to other places much,
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