It’s one of those cases where the movie not only made him famous and a reference point for the novella vague, but really saved his life. François Trifo is a child of cinema. Without knowing his real father, living his childhood alienated from his family, with several problems, in a notorious area of Paris, his only way out was the dark cinema.
His love for cinema and especially for classic American cinema turned into passion, obsession. He wanted to watch at least three movies a day, taking notes and making his own movie-like universe as a teenager. He was not discouraged by his incarceration in the reformatory, nor by his psychological instability, which will lead to two suicide attempts. The magic of cinema will illuminate the path that will take him away from his demons and with the help of the theoretician Andre Bazen he will enter the cinematic circuit. Initially as a critic of the famous Cahiers du cinema and then as a director, opening the huge circle of “New Wave”, together with Jacques Lick Godard, but also Eric Romer, Claude Chabrol and Anies Varda.
If François Trifo were alive today, he would be 90 years old (he was born on February 6, 1932), that is, two years younger than Godard, who continues to create, to experiment, to awaken, to talk about the crimes of the West. ” culture “. But Trifo, this dreamy romantic, did not manage to live the last decades that foretell a dystopian future. His life was cut short at his artistic peak, at the age of 52, in October 1984.
Notorious roads
François Trifo was born in Paris, without knowing his father, and with Janine’s mother marrying Roland Trifo, who agreed to adopt him. He lived for many years with his grandmother and various nannies. He lived his childhood mainly in the streets of the infamous area where he lived, while his only way out was the cinema. Without much appreciation for his parents, who loved mountaineering, something unthinkable for him, he would start watching movies frantically, reaching 4,000 by the age of 19. A teenager steals his uncle’s typewriter to fund a movie club for his friends. This will infuriate his father, who will lock him up in the reformatory for six months!
From the reformatory in Saigon
In the reformatory he will continue to study the cinema, while the managers of the institution diagnosed “psychomotor instability” and after a while they realized that this is due to the problematic family environment and to be precise the lack of interest and love for his face. At the age of 18, he will attempt suicide with 23 scratches on his hand. He will be saved by a miracle. To make another absurd choice. He would enlist in the army and be sent to Saigon, where colonial France was making all its living. He will soon realize his mistake and go bankrupt, to be arrested and sent to prison. He will be expelled from the army as an “unstable character”, he will return to Paris, but seeing that everything remains the same he will try to commit suicide for the second time. Fortunately without success.
Cinematic madness and Bazen
One of the doctors who treated him knew the film theorist Andre Bazen and will bring him in contact with him, knowing Trifo’s madness for cinema. Bazen will give him the opportunity to write reviews at the Cahiers du cinema and to stand out for the depth and causticity of his texts. There he will meet the other terrible children of the “New Wave” and will understand that the next step he had to take was directing. So after a short film, Trifo, in the late 50’s will offer us his first film, “Four Hundred Hits”, in which there are several autobiographical elements, as we watch a boy, who through constant clashes with his environment, he tries to escape, to grow up with his own wants. His name will triumphantly enter the map of cinema, as with “Four Hundred Hits” he will win the Director Award in Cannes. With the young Antoine as the main character, the director’s cinematic alter ego, he will get to know his own world better, in four more films “Love at Twenty” (1962), “Stolen Kisses” (1968), “Illegal Bed” ( 1970) and “Love Puts It on its Feet” (1979).
Ufologist …
His career will be remarkable, as Trifo, even when he became one of the most important representatives of French cinema, directing the important films “Jill and Jim”, “Fahrenheit 451”, “American Night”, writing screenplays, participating in productions and playing the French ufologist in Spielberg’s excellent science fiction film “Close Contacts of the Third Type”, he will remain a romantic lover of cinema. He believed that “tomorrow’s cinema will not be made by cameramen, but by artists for whom filming will be a passionate adventure, an act of love.” His dream of what he adored will be flatly refuted. Of course, if he had lived in the following decades, we would have had a third suicide attempt. Of course there are always exceptions, directors who are not employees, people with ideas, who will support them even in the face of fierce war. But let us not be blind, exceptions, with proper handling, are always a good excuse to hide alien aspirations, interests, manipulation of the masses, profits, many profits.
Trifo-Hitchcock
François Trifo, a fan of simplicity and the principle that narrative is the cornerstone of fiction, will not get involved with psychoanalytic interventions, intricate symbolism, political militarism, although politicized. Nevertheless, the contradiction of his character will make him Hitchcock’s biggest fan, something that will be reflected in his book “Hitchcock-Trifo”, in a river conversation, which explores the cinematic world of Metro, a work that as a He also contributed to the overestimation of several films by the English phlegmatic and complex director.
A big heart
But Trifos, in addition to his weaknesses as a director, knew how to love. And women, but much more the cinema. His death on October 21, 1984, will leave Godard’s friend alone, who, as the cinephile’s clichéd expression suggests, “Godard was the mind and Trypho the heart of the novel.” Maybe that’s why Godard in recent years, wanting to fill the gap left by his friend and “eternal teenager of cinema”, gained a big heart.
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