“The Story of Adele H” (1975)
“A musical composition for one instrument” was how Truffaut described “The Story of Adele H,” and it’s no understatement as to the centrality of the luminous, then 19-year-old Isabelle Adjani in the title role. But based on the real diaries of the Adele Hugo, the youngest daughter of the famed Victor Hugo who suffered from an acute form of erotomania (and possibly schizophrenia), which drove her to madness when the object of her obsession rejected her following their brief fling, Truffaut’s film is a lot less austere than that description might suggest. In fact, it’s a wildly, grandly passionate period saga deriving its jaw-dropping loveliness from “Days of Heaven” DP Nestor Almendros‘ immaculate camerawork and the exceptional set and costume design as well as from Adjani’s remarkable face: both glowingly youthful and expressively tormented throughout. While there’s no supernatural activity, ‘Adele H’ feels like a ghost story, with Adele behaving like a woman possessed, as she trails her lover Lieutenant Pinson (the equally stunning Bruce Robinson —yes, that Bruce Robinson who would later direct “Withnail and I“) from continent to continent, assuming false identities before finally leaving her senses entirely and being consigned to an asylum for forty years (13 years later, Adjani would also play Camille Claudel, another famously unstable French heroine who lived for decades in a mental institution). ‘Adele H’ may seem atypical for Truffaut, with its corseted, overtly expressive performances running counter to the modern, heightened naturalism he was better known for. And yet it’s a similar false comparison that claims “The Age of Innocence” is not a real Scorsese film —Truffaut’s homagistic style is evident even here (though maybe he references the Hitchcock of “Rebecca” or “Jamaica Inn” rather than any others) and the effortless grace with which he renders this sumptuous, highly strung melodrama so compulsively watchable is unmistakable. It’s known now largely for Adjani’s powerhouse turn: it’s the first of many crazy women she would play in her distinguished career, but “The Story of Adele H” deserves another look as it pertains to Truffaut’s canon. It’s probably the closest he ever came to an all-out “women’s picture” and it practically heaves with emotional drama. 
“Small Change ” (1976)
The closing section of an unofficial trilogy about childhood begun with “The 400 Blows” and concluded with “The Wild Child,” “Small Change” is the culmination of nearly twenty years of work —Truffaut had begun making notes for a project that would combine a number of stories about childhood in the mid-1950s (his ’57 short “Les Mistons” came out of those notes). Without much need to shoehorn it into narrative, the film isn’t made up so much of episodes as it is snippets of the lives of a group of children, and in lesser hands this could have easily threatened to slip into a sort of highbrow version of “Kids Say The Darndest Things.” But any conclusion along those lines would be to wildly underestimate Truffaut’s skill. Leaning even more into docudrama than “The Wild Child,” this film has a sort of improvised feel, suggesting that these aren’t actors (which they weren’t), but real kids hopping onto the screen for a few minutes at a time. And fortunately the kids are wonderful, from the heartbreaking, Antoine Doinel-like Julien to the almost silent-comedy-esque interplay between a 2-year-old and a kitten near a dangerously open window. Rarely for a film entirely about children (a few parents or teachers do appear but as supporting players), there’s little sentimentalization or sanctification of childhood —this is just kids being kids, from telling dirty stories you don’t really understand to learning to fend for themselves. Letting his child cast be themselves on screen is a tricky proposition, but it works —indeed, Steven Spielberg, who worked with the director soon after on “Close Encounters Of A Third Kind,” claims he learned how to direct children thanks to Truffaut’s advice. 
“The Green Room” (1978)
Truffaut’s biggest financial disaster and a film much bleaker and darker than most of his work is also one of his very best, and certainly one of his most underrated. Adapting two Henry James short stories, “The Altar of the Dead” and “The Beast In The Jungle,” this film stars Truffaut himself as a death-obsessed journalist and traumatized World War One survivor who comes across Cecilia (Nathalie Baye), a younger woman who hangs out at the same cemetery. Truffaut (who was only six years away from his own passing) had become increasingly preoccupied by death, particularly after the passing of Cinematheque Francaise director Henri Langlois and friend Roberto Rossellini and after watching “Shoot The Piano Player” and realizing that half of those on screen were no longer alive. The question of how we as a society honor the dead became a major interest of the filmmaker, which culminated in this low-key haunting picture that seems to come from a different filmmaker entirely. As the work of a fairly committed atheist, it’s a remarkably soulful and thoughtful picture in its treatment of death and grief, but his trademark humanity is never far from the surface, and the slow, gradual bond between Truffaut’s Julien and Baye’s Cecilia and their building of a shrine together is one of the most moving aspects of the director’s whole oeuvre. Nodding to Bergman in theme and to Tarkovsky in form (the photography by frequent collaborator Nestor Almendros, who was Truffaut’s go-to for his more “serious” fare, could be the most striking of any of his films), it’s a definite outiler in his career and probably his least accessible film, but is all the more rewarding when you spend a little time with it. 
“The Woman Next Door” (1981)
Truffaut began the 1980s with one of his greatest successes, the Oscar-nominated, multi-Cesar-winning box office smash “The Last Metro.” Some Truffaut fans will think it blasphemy, but we’re actually more fond of the director’s follow-up, his second collaboration with star Gerard Depardieu, the taut, low-key Hitchcockian relationship tragedy “The Woman Next Door.” Developed from an unmade project from the early 1970s called “Sur Les Rails” that would have teamed Jeanne Moreau and Charles Denner and loosely riffing on the myth of “Tristan & Isolde,” the film stars Depardieu as Bernard, whose existence with his wife (Michele Baumgartner) and children is interrupted when a couple move next door: the new bride of Philippe (Henri Garcin) is Mathilde (Fanny Ardant in her first big-screen performance: she and Truffaut became romantically involved during production and were together until his death), his ex-lover from a decade or so earlier. It was clearly an unstable, passionate affair, and the two attempt to avoid each other initially, but it’s clear from the way that neither mentions their history to their respective spouses that they’ll end up being drawn back to each other with terrible consequences for all involved. Told in almost mythic manner by disabled tennis-club owner Madame Jouve (Veronique Silver), who bears the scars of an ill-fated romance (Truffaut added the framing device in post-production, and it’s hard to imagine the film without it), it’s one of the director’s darkest pictures, reminiscent of late-period Hitchcock and a much more successful attempt at capturing the master’s style than, say, “The Bride Wore Black,” complete with an elegantly tragic and taut screenplay, and controlled, careful framing aided by terrific photography by William Lubtchansky (“Shoah”). And in Depardieu (around whom Truffaut wanted to build a film after his smaller part in “The Last Metro”) and Ardant, Truffaut had two of the finest performances he ever received: the former a friendly lug who keeps his passionate side locked away, the latter steering helplessly into something she knows will be a disaster. The film finds its perfect metaphor as Depardieu and his wife overhear a pair of screaming cats: are they fighting or are they fucking? It’s a fine line at the center of one of the more undervalued films in the Truffaut canon. 
“Confidentially Yours” (1983)
This is probably a controversial choice in some quarters, but we’ll stand by it: Truffaut’s final film is undeniably a minor work, but in retrospect feels terminally underrated (including by Truffaut, who dismissed it) and is perhaps his mostly fully-achieved and enjoyable experiment in crime noir. Based on “The Long Saturday Night” by Charles WIlliams (who also wrote the book that “Dead Calm” was based on), it’s a sly upending of the mystery-thriller genre, which sees Barbara (Fanny Ardant), the secretary of estate-agent Julien (Jean-Louis Trintignant), step in to clear her boss’s name when he’s accused of killing his wife’s lover. Nodding more to something like “The Thin Man” and even screwball comedy (Truffaut asked Ardant to perform her lines at top speed), it’s also a return to the Hitchcock influence that had taken a back seat at that point. But whereas “The Bride Wore Black” sometimes felt like imitation rather than homage, “Confidentially Yours” feels like 100% a Truffaut picture. The black-and-white photography imbuess more authenticity —it often seems like it could be a lost gem from an earlier era that’s somehow only just been unearthed. It’s perhaps all the more touching as the film is clearly a deeply felt love letter to Ardant. Truffaut had relationships with many of his leading ladies, but none are more glowingly paid tribute to than Ardant. While it’s tempting to wish that Truffaut had ended his career on a valedictory note, it’d be hard to deny him this, even if it wasn’t very fun.
Honorable Mentions: You could make the argument that Truffaut never made a truly bad film, but we didn’t have the time to cover everything here (though watch this space for that full retrospective sometime soon). But in brief, there are also early shorts “A Visit,” “The Mischief Makers” and “A Story Of Water” (the latter co-directed with Godard), along with 1961’s “The Army Game” co-directed with Claude de Givray, and 1962’s “Antoine and Colette,” his segment of the “Love At Twenty” portmanteau film and the second film in the Antoine Doinel sequence. 1966’s Ray Bradbury adaptation and Truffaut’s English-language debut “Fahrenheit 451” has a reputation as a misfire, but it’s still an interesting and powerful picture that’s gained in critical respect over the years. 1969’s “Mississippi Mermaid,” isn’t as effective as “The Bride Wore Black” and is definitely one of the director’s least successful ventures, though it still has elements that sing, especially the lead turns by Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve. Comparatively speaking, 1979’s “Love On The Run” feels like the minor, clip-show-esque closer to the Doinel series, but 1972’s “Such A Gorgeous Kid Like Me” might be his least worthy film, an uneven mix of crime film and farce that has strong moments but doesn’t work as a whole. 1977’s “The Man Who Loved Women” works much better as comedy but has aged less well than some of the director’s films, while 1980’s “The Last Metro” is for some one of his greatest masterpieces, but for us, is rather more self-important and self-consciously prestige-y than the director’s other output. Anything you think should have made our list? Let us know in the comments, ’cause we could talk Truffaut all day long. –Oli Lyttelton, Jessica Kiang, Ben Brock