Antoine Doinel cycle

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The Antoine Doinel cycle is a series of four feature films and a short film about the life of the fictional character Antoine Doinel , which the filmmaker and former film critic François Truffaut shot between 1958 and 1978: the youth drama They kissed and they hit him (1958), the episode Antoine and Colette in the omnibus film Love at Twenty (1962), the love comedy Stolen Kisses (1968), the married comedy Table and Bed (1970) and the film puzzle Love on the Run (1978).

François Truffaut and his leading actress Claude Jade at the preview of their third film together in the Doinel cycle, " Liebe auf der Flucht ", 1979

The figure of Antoine Doinel, embodied by Jean-Pierre Léaud , shows clear autobiographical traits of the director. Doinel is Truffaut's alter ego on screen. In three of four feature films, Claude Jade , Truffaut's fiancée after her debut in 1968, is Léaud's “better half” as Antoine's lover and wife Christine Darbon-Doinel. While the debut was still a drama with comic elements, the easy narrative style predominates in the following films. While the first two parts were shot in black and white, the last two parts are in color.

Since the second feature film Stolen Kisses, a chronicle of the couple Antoine and Christine, Truffaut's actors Jean-Pierre Léaud and Claude Jade have experienced married life in bed and table . In the last film of the cycle, Love on the Run , Antoine and Christine divorce but remain friends; In the same film, both Antoine and Christine meet the character Colette, a young woman who was Antoine's platonic friend in love with Twenty .

It corresponds to the entire filmography of Truffaut since his second film that for him women are always the strong characters, as in the Antoine Christine saga. The two characters Antoine and Christine are similar in their naivete; while Christine matures over time, Antoine remains childish even in adulthood. Delicacy with a tendency towards eccentricity and poetry characterize his Antoine, who becomes a symbiosis of Truffaut, Doinel and Léaud himself. And finally those of Christine and Claude Jade, because Truffaut fell in love while filming and they both planned to get married in June 1968. With the sequel, Doinel also became deputy at Claude Jade Truffaut's. The Doinel cycle is also exemplary of Truffaut's oeuvre as a whole, who repeatedly makes autobiographical references in all of his films.

The cycle, which extends over 20 years, is unique in the history of film.

Movies

In They kissed and they beat him , Truffaut 1959 describes the childhood of the boy Antoine Doinel, who grew up in an ignorant environment. Truffaut's first feature film wins the Director's Prize and the OCIC Award at the 1959 Cannes International Film Festival .

1962 followed by a 20-minute episode with Doinel in the episode film Love at Twenty in the sketch Antoine and Colette . Antoine falls in love, but the girl is not interested in him.

1968 follows Robbery Kisses . For the female lead of violinist Christine Darbon, Truffaut discovered 19-year-old Claude Jade at the theater , who from now on had her permanent place in this film series. At the end of the award-winning comedy, there is Antoine's marriage promise to Christine. Stolen Kisses has received numerous international awards and has been nominated for an Oscar .

1970 Truffaut describes the everyday marriage of his heroes Antoine and Christine and Antoine's obsession with a young Japanese woman ( Hiroko Berghauer ) in bed and table . In the end he returns to Christine. The brilliantly played, amiable and entertaining love story is peppered with characterizing image and dialogue points, characterized by warm human humor and confident ease.

  • Love on the run (1978) with Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claude Jade, Marie-France Pisier

After an eight-year break, Truffaut ended the Antoine Doinel cycle with love on the run in 1978 - again with Jean-Pierre Léaud and Claude Jade in the lead roles - for which he can fall back on numerous “flashbacks” and these in a new (ironic) context used.

Autobiography

In terms of autobiography, the relationship between the director and his leading actress was particularly important. While working on Stolen Kisses , Truffaut fell in love with Claude Jade , but abandoned his intention a few days before the wedding. At that time producer Marcel Berbert and actor Jean-Claude Brialy were available as witnesses. Personal references between Truffaut and Claude Jade - including both experiences during the riots in May 1968 - can also be found in Domicile conjugal and L'amour en fuite after Baisers volés . So also Antoine's nickname for Christine "Peggy sage", which Truffaut used for Claude Jade.

main actor

Even if the two stars of the Doinel cycle worked with other great directors ( Jean-Pierre Léaud and others with Godard and Bertolucci ; Claude Jade and others with Hitchcock and Jutkewitsch ), their careers remained inextricably linked to the Doinel series.

Sequels

In the 1980s, Daniel Cohn-Bendit , who had demonstrated alongside Truffaut , Jade and Léaud in February 1968 for the Cinémathèque française , planned a continuation of the cycle. He even contacted Claude Jade, but the project failed. It was not until 2004 that a radio play was created that focused on Antoine's son Alphonse ( Stanislas Merhar ) and his mother Christine (again Claude Jade). Eva Truffaut, daughter of the director, sponsored the radio play Le journal d'Alphonse , based on film and manuscript material found 20 years after the death of her father, as well as the documentary-film novel of the same name by Elisabeth Butterfly (see François Truffaut ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Der Spiegel, May 5, 2004