TEHRAN – The Iranian Artists Forum (IAF) in Tehran will screen the 1978 French historic drama film “Green Room,” directed by François Truffaut on Thursday.
The 94-minute film will be exhibited in Persian subtitles at IAF’s Naseri Hall at 6pm, Mehr reported.
“Green Room” is based on the 1895 short story, “Altar of the Dead.” In Henry James, the man becomes engrossed in the dead people of his life and builds a monument to them. It is also based on two other works by James. The 1903 novel “The Beast of the Jungle” and the 1896 short story “The Way It Come.” It was his 17th feature film as a director, and the third and final of his own films he played in the leading role. Starring Truffaut, Nathalie Baye, Jean Dasté and Patrick Maléon.
Truffaut worked on film scripts for several years, and felt a special connection to the theme of honoring and reminding the dead. The film includes portraits of people in his own life at the main character, “Altar of the Dead.”
The story takes place in a small French town at the end of his twenties. Julien Davenne is a journalist whose wife Julie passed away 10 years ago. He gathered all the objects of Julie in the green room. As the fire destroys the room, he renovates the small chapel and dedicates it to Julie and his other dead.
“Green Room” was one of Truffaut’s most acclaimed films and one of his least successful works. It was made towards the end of Truffaut’s career, and thematically the film contrasts with his previous works. “The Green Room” appears to remind us of childhood, focusing more on the final stages of life, as Truffaut expresses his views on death and the memory of the dead. Nevertheless, the film’s alternative themes again reflect Truffaut’s sense of personal expressionism throughout his career.
François Roland Truffaut (1932-1984) was a French filmmaker, actor and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. He was under the leadership of film critic Andre Bazin, and was hired as a young man, and was hired to write for Bazin’s Cahies Ducinema, where he became a supporter of the Oater theory, which assumes that the film’s director is the true author. “400 Blow” (1959) was the definitive New Wave film, starring Jean Pierre Laud as Truffaut’s Alter Ego Antoine de Iner. Truffaut provided the story for another milestone in the movement, “Breathless” (1960), directed by his Cahiers colleague Jean-Luc Godard.
His other notable films include Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1962), The Soft Skin (1964), Two English Girls (1971), and The Last Metro (1980).
Truffaut’s “Day for Night” (1973) won him the Best For Best Film BAFTA Award and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
He wrote Hitchcock/Truffaut (1966). This was tied second in a book-length interview with his hero Alfred Hitchcock in his list of best book visuals and sounds about the film. Truffaut paid tribute to Hitchcock in “The Bride Wore Wear Black” (1968), “Mississippi Mermaid” (1969), and his final film, “Confidentially Yours” (1981).
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