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This is a piece Truffaut wrote on The Ballad of Narayama separate from the one he did for Cahiers du Cinéma No. 88. The translation was included in Truffaut's The Films In My Life, though the book did not source the original text. (Presumably, it was written for Arts Magazine, but I could not locate the native text).
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The Legend of Nayarama

We know that quite a large part of Japanese film production is intended for export. This was the case with Gate of Hell, for example, which the Japanese critics quite rightly did not find important. The confusion about the first Japanese films to be released in , with the worst mixed indiscriminately with two or three masterpieces, all of them being presented as masterpieces, has compromised their distribution in in the art and experimental theaters. The most beautiful Japanese film that we have been able to see, indeed one of the most beautiful films in the world, Mizoguchi's Tales of the Hazy Moon¹, which has French subtitles, is still waiting for some distributor with perspicacity enough to show it commercially in Paris.

The Legend of Nayarama, by Keisuke Kinoshita, is a film that is difficult to distribute in Europe. It is less plastically beautiful than the Mizoguchis we have seen at the Cinémathèque or at the festivals, although in the same tradition. It reminds us of Ophuls through its daring use of Cinemascope, colored projectors, and, extravagantly, of moving cameras.

When the old people of a certain village where a bowl of rice feeds a man for several months reach seventy, they are left on the summit of Nayarama mountain so they will no longer burden their families. When the moment comes, and she asks, the dutiful son must carry his aging mother there on his back. The hero of this film, too, must carry his father to the mountain top on his back like a mountaineer's knapsack. He puts the old man down in a crevice in the rocks and descends to the village, lighter in his body, if heavier in his heart. Vultures begin to fly around the summit. When it begins to snow, the hero, filled with remorse, turns and goes back to find his father dead, frozen, turned into a statue. It is a sight we don't see every day.

The astonishing thing is that this cruel and inhuman legend is treated only in its most human aspect. There are evasions, exceptions, procrastination. The old man doesn't want to go to the mountain and so again and again he delays his departure. The old woman wants to go, but before she does she breaks her teeth on a stone so that she will no longer be able to eat solid food. We are reminded irresistibly of Beckett's Endgame and last meals of gruel when we confront this grandiose and terrible portrait of human ruin. Indeed, these are not pictures we want to look at from five to seven, but later in the night, before we go to sleep... perhaps forever. My God, what a beautiful film!
Footnotes:

1 — Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi, 1953)

THE LEGEND OF NARAYAMA (Cahiers' Venice 1958 coverage)
(Cahiers du Cinéma No. 88, October 1958)

The late Cardinet cinema had allowed us to see, for one week, without subtitles, but nevertheless brilliant, Like a Wildflower¹ by Kinoshita. The vision of this single film allowed Jacques Rivette to associate the name of this filmmaker with that of the greatest, the sublime Kenji Mizoguchi.

It is still an absurdity of festivals to reward, in of Japanese films, only the most commercial for Europe, that is, those that are precisely made for export, thus impure. It is quite clear that the Golden Lion of Venice belonged to the austere Narayama, rather than to the senile Rickshaw², a remake by the same hack, of a hit from twenty-five years ago!

The Legend of Narayama tells the story of the voluntary exile in the mountain of the elderly who no longer want to be a burden on their children; it is a legend cruel to the point of inhumanity and which is treated here in a very poetic and stylized manner in of form (the countryside in studio with exteriors in models and mountains in trompe-l'oeil), but extremely realistic in the treatment of the screenplay.

Throughout this beautiful work, we witness the family tears caused by this harsh custom; the old father who does not want to go to the mountain will be thrown into the ravine by his wicked son; the good son, his brother, cannot resign himself to leaving his old mother up there; he wants to bring her back to the village and begs her, but she does not answer, because the God of Narayama is formal: not a word must be spoken on the mountain top; the son returns sadly; the snow begins to fall; mad with pain, he turns back and finds his mother frozen under the snow; he only says to her, "How lucky you are, mother, it is snowing!", and leaves in the storm, stepping over the skeletons.

All this was grand, all this was beautiful, subtitled in French for, I hope, some Parisian "art and trial" cinema; but, in the meantime, why leave Tales of the Pale Moon³ in their boxes?

Footnotes:

1 — She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (Kinoshita, 1955)
2 — The Rickshaw Man (Inagaki, 1958)
3 — Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi, 1953)

DISCLAIMER: This is an AI-based translation using ChatGPT-4. Thus, this is bound to be dodgy in more ways than one; for transparency, I have posted the original French text as well, which you can view here.

— F. T.

LA LEGENDE DU NARAYAMA (Cahiers' Venise 1958 couverture)
(Cahiers du Cinéma No. 88, Octobre 1958)

Feu le cinéma Cardinet nous avait permis de voir pendant une semaine, sans sous-titres, mais néanmoins génial, Comme une fleur des champs de Kinoshita. Une vision de ce seul film permit à Jacques Rivette de faire voisinier le nom de ce cinéaste avec celui du plus grand, le sublimissime Kenji Mizoguchi.

C'est encore une absurdité des festivals de ne récompenser, en fait de films japonais, que les plus commerciaux pour l'Europe, c'est-à-dire ceux qui précisément sont fabriqués pour l'exportation, donc impurs. Il est bien évident que le Lion d'Or de Venise revenait à l'austère Narayama, plutôt qu'au Pousse-Pousse sénile, remake par le même tâcheron, d'un succès d'il y a vingt-cinq ans!

La légende du Narayama raconte l'exil volontaire dans la montagne des vieillards qui ne veulent plus être à la charge de leurs enfants; c'est une légende cruelle jusqu'à l'inhumain et qui est traitée ici de façon très poétique et stylisée en ce qui concerne la forme (la campagne en studio avec des extérieurs en maquettes et des montagnes en trompe-l'oeil), mais extrêmement réaliste quant au traitement du scénario.

On assiste, tout au long de cette belle œuvre, aux déchirements familiaux qu'occasionne cette rude coutume; le vieux père qui ne veut pas aller à la montagne sera jeté dans le ravin par son fils méchant; le bon fils, son frère, ne se résigne pas à laisser là-haut sa vieille mère; il veut la ramener au village et la supplie, mais elle ne répond pas, car le Dieu du Narayama est formel: pas une parole ne doit être prononcée sur le sommet de la montagne; le fils revient tristement; la neige se met à tomber; fou de douleur, il rebrousse chemin et retrouve sa mère congelée sous la neige; il lui dit seulement: « Comme tu as de la chance, mère, il neige! », et repart dans la tempête, enjambant les squelettes.

Tout cela était grand, tout cela était beau, sous-titré en français à l'intention, j'espère, de quelque cinéma parisien « d'art et d'essai »; mais, en attendant, pourquoi laisser Les Contes de la Lune Vague dans leurs boîtes?
— F. T.

The Beans of Evil
(Les haricots du mal, Cahiers du Cinéma No. 56, February 1956)

Those who cannot kill take refuge in creation. The nostalgia for uncommitted murders obsesses the best filmmakers; but they have little to offer us on the world of crime and sex other than the viewpoint, quite tedious in the long run, of the honest man. La Chienne, The Woman in the Portrait, Shadow of a Doubt, are irable but "bourgeois" films, where Renoir, Lang, and Hitchcock reveal themselves to be assassins. Hence the taste of these three filmmakers and others for this theme: the ordinary man plunged into a bloody adventure that goes beyond him.

The preoccupations of Max Ophuls, Nicholas Ray, Rossellini, Howard Hawks etc., and Kazan seem healthier. Faced with these eternally innocent characters, irresponsible for us and for the author, guilty only in the blindfolded eyes of justice, we long for a cinema whose morality would be firmer, more inventive and newer than that based on social comfort.

We lack a Jean Genet to tell it all, and even if we had one, censorship would hardly allow us to watch his films except for the credits, the word 'end', and a few connecting shots. Yes, we lack a filmmaker who would sing the praises of heinous crime, prostitution, pederasty, sordid theft, denunciation and its twin sister, treason — in short, absolute evil — this filmmaker being himself the living example of total abjection. Suffice it to say here that East of Eden, whose great interest lies elsewhere, takes us somewhat down this road of reconsidered morality, of good and evil at the cleaners, so that I need say no more about the screenplay other than allusively.

East of Eden is the first film to present us with a Baudelairean hero, fascinated by vice and by honors, who both hates and loves his family at the same time. It is James Dean, the freshly cut flower of evil, who is important to talk about in a film review, James Dean who is cinema, just as much as: Lillian Gish, Chaplin, Ingrid Bergman, etc. James Dean succeeded in commercializing a film that was hardly commercial at all, in enlivening an abstraction, in getting a huge audience interested in moral problems treated in an unusual way, those famous moral problems that make some whistle The Big Knife, Les Mauvaises Rencontres, and Lola Montès.

His myopic gaze prevents him from smiling, and the smile, which one can extract from him with patience, is a victory. His power of seduction is such — one must hear the audience react when Raymond Massey refuses to accept the money which is love — that he could kill his father and mother on screen every night, with the blessing of the most snobbish and popular audiences alike. His character here is a synthesis of Les Enfants terribles, single-handedly assuming the triple heredity of Elisabeth, Paul and Dargelos.

Physically, his ability is reminiscent of the little squirrel in The Rules of the Game, or André Bazin's dislocated cat Zizi, who was lucky enough to be stepped on as a child. I have just as much praise for Julie Harris, who combines her own delicate charm with that of Louise de Vilmorin and Anne-Marie Cazalis. In seven minutes, she learns about life at the funfair, where she experiences her first collision, her first theft, and her first real kiss.

Kazan has been singularly and culpably disparaged. There are several reasons for this: Kazan is much maligned, and for what in him belongs most to others: dishonest, frilly appearances, framing and lighting effects, all that cunning bric-a-brac and other traps for dupes. "Mind you, in black and white, there's a lot more trickery than in color... With color, you have to give up these tricks; it's more and more about being honest." (JEAN RENOIR).

East of Eden, Kazan’s first film in color and Cinemascope, is also his first honest film in the sense that Renoir means above. After this revelation had been confirmed five times over, I went to see A Streetcar Named Desire again, and it took all the good faith and insight, of which I am capable of, to overcome my annoyance at the flashing lights masking Viven Leigh’s extraordinary performance.

On the Waterfront made it difficult to remain objective, for reasons that have more to do with Budd Schulberg (the screenwriter) than with Kazan himself. For Elia Kazan, unity is not the shot, but the scene, over which he exercises control of unparalleled firmness; the longer the scene, the better it is, in of refinement, fluidity, and variety. The very long scene between Julie Harris and James Dean about the $3,000 ring thrown into the sea, made up of thirty shots in shot-reverse-shot, is prodigiously conducted.

East of Eden definitively consecrates the triumph of colour: we will love in the sun what we disdained in the shade. We forgive Kazan for not having liked his films, as children forgive their parents: that is the whole story of East of Eden, and the whole story of our generation.

DISCLAIMER: This is an AI-based translation using ChatGPT-4 and DeepL Translate, mixed and matched for improved readability (while maintaining the essence of the source). Regardless, this is bound to be dodgy in more ways than one; for transparency, I have posted the original French text as well, which you can view here.

FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT

Les haricots du mal
(The Beans of Evil, Cahiers du Cinéma No. 56, Février 1956)

Qui ne peut teur se réfugie dans la création. La nostalgie des meurtres non commis obsède les meilleurs cinéastes; mais ils n'ont guère à nous offrir sur le monde du crime et du sexe que le point de vue, assez fastidieux à la longue, de l'honnête homme. La Chienne, La femme au portrait, L'ombre d'un doute, sont des films irables mais « bourgeois », où Renoir, Lang et Hitchcock se révent assassins. D'où le goût de ces trois cinéastes et de quelques autres pour ce thème: l'homme ordinaire plongé dans une aventure sanglante qui le dée.

Plus saines m'apparaissent les préoccupations de Max Ophuls, Nicholas Ray, Rossellini, Howard Hawks etc... Kazan. Devant ces personnages éternellement innocents et irresponsables pour nous et pour l'auteur, coupables seulement aux yeux bandés de la justice, le regret nous vient d'un cinéma dont la morale serait tout à la fois plus ferme, plus inventée et plus neuve que celle fondée sur le confort social.

Il nous manque un Jean Genet pour tout dire et l'aurions-nous que la censure ne nous laisserait, guère regarder de ses films que le générique, le mot fin et quelques plans de raccords.Oui, il nous manque un cinéaste qui chanterait le crime crapuleux, la prostitution, la pédérastie, le vol sordide, la délation et sa sœur jumelle la trahison, bref le mal absolu, ce cinéaste devant être lui-même l'exemple vivant de l'abjection totale. Il me suffit d'indiquer ici que À l'Est d'Éden dont le grand intérêt est ailleurs, nous engage quelque peu sur cette voie de la morale reconsidérée, du bien et du mal au pressing, pour n'avoir plus à reparler du scénario autrement que de manière allusive.

À l'Est d'Éden est le premier film à nous présenter un héros baudelairien, fasciné par le vice et par les honneurs, qui famille je vous hais et qui famille je vous aime, en même temps. C'est de James Dean, fleur du mal fraîchement coupée, qu'il importe de parler dans une revue de cinéma, de James Dean qui est le cinéma, au même titre que: Lillian Gish, Chaplin, Ingrid Bergman, etc. James Dean a réussi à rendre commercial un film qui ne l'était guère, à vivifier une abstraction, à intéresser un immense public à des problèmes moraux traités de manière inhabituelle, ces fameux problèmes moraux qui font certains siffler The Big Knife, Les Mauvaises Rencontres, Lola Montès.

Son regard de myope l'empêche de sourire, et le sourire, qu'à force de patience, on peut tirer de lui est une victoire. Son pouvoir de séduction est tel — il faut entendre réagir la salle quand Raymond Massey refuse l'argent qui est amour — qu'il pourrait tous les soirs sur l'écran tuer père et mère avec la bénédiction du public le plus snob comme le populaire. Son personnage ici est une synthèse des Enfants terribles assumant, à lui seul la triple hérédité d'Elisabeth, Paul et Dargelos.

Physiquement, son agilité fait penser au petit écureuil de La Règle du Jeu ou encore à Zizi, le chat disloqué d'André Bazin qui a eu la chance qu'on lui marche dessus lorsqu'il était petit. J'ai autant de louanges au service de Julie Harris qui cumule son propre charme délicat à celui de Louise de Vilmorin et d'Anne-Marie Cazalis. En sept minutes elle apprend la vie, à la fête foraine où elle connaît son premier abordage, son premier vol et son premier vrai baiser.

Nous avons singulièrement et coupablement médit de Kazan. À cela, plusieurs raisons: Kazan est fort mal iré et pour ce qui en lui appartient le plus à d'autres: les apparences froufroutantes déshonnêtes, les effets de cadrage et d'éclairage, tout ce bricà-brac roublard et autres pièges à dupes. « Remarquez, dans le noir et blanc, le truquage existe beaucoup plus que dans la couleur... Avec la couleur il faut renoncer à ces trucs-là; il s'agit de plus en plus d'être honnête. » (JEAN RENOIR).

À l'Est d'Éden, premier film en couleurs et en Cinémascope de Kazan est aussi son premier film honnête au sens où, plus haut, l'entend Renoir. Après cette révélation cinq fois confirmée, je suis allé revoir Un tramway nommé Désir et il m'a fallu toute la bonne foi et la perspicacité dont je suis capable, pour surmonter l'agacement devant les éclairages clignotants qui masquent le jeu extraordinaire de Vivien Leigh.

Devant On the Waterfront, il était difficile de rester objectif pour des raisons qui concernent plutôt Budd Shulberg (le scénariste) que Kazan luimême. L'unité chez Elia Kazan, n'est pas le plan mais la scène sur laquelle il exerce un contrôle d'une fermeté sans exemple; plus la scène est longue, meilleure elle est, par le raffinement du jeu, sa fluidité, sa variété. Celle très longue entre Julie Harris et James Dean sur la bague de 3.000 dollars jetée à la flotte, constituée de trente plans en champ contre-champ, est prodigieusement conduite.

A l'Est d'Eden consacre définitivement le triomphe de la couleur: nous aimerons au soleil ce que nous dédaignions à l'ombre. Nous pardonnons à Kazan de n'avoir pas aimé ses films car les enfants pardonnent à leurs parents: c'est toute l'histoire d'A l'Est d'Eden, toute l'histoire aussi de notre génération.

FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT

This is an aggregation of all of François Truffaut's 3-star and 4-star ratings for the "Le conseil des dix" segment at Cahiers du Cinéma (based on his participation between November 1955 to July 1968).

3-star rating: A must-see film.
4-star rating: A masterpiece.

Recognize that films with a 3-star rating and a heart are films rated before the transition from a 3-star rating system to a 4-star scale. (These films may have otherwise been 4-star films, which is important to keep in mind since Truffaut primarily participated during the 3-star system era). It is also worth noting that 2-star ratings were a sign of positive endorsement as well, but this list aims to highlight the films that Truffaut deemed exceptional.

Some other lists of interest:
- Films cited by François Truffaut
- “A certain trend in French cinema”, by François Truffaut
- Truffaut’s List of Interesting Films of the Occupation and Resistance
- Films Included in François Truffaut’s The Films in My Life
- Francois Truffaut’s Underrated American Films
- François Truffaut: Cahiers du Cinéma Top Ten Lists (1954-1965)

• Hallelujah
• Viva Villa!
• Toni
• Time in the Sun
• Lifeboat
• L'amore
• Anatahan
• Love in the City
• Fear
• The Crucified Lovers

...plus 41 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.