“CAUTION:  WRECKED LIFE AHEAD”

By Raymond Benson

There have been a lot of movies about adultery and the ultimate havoc it can cause. More recent titles would include the likes of Fatal Attraction or Unfaithful. Some of them have a happy ending, others not; however, there is always a moral to these tales: Don’t do it unless you want to wreck your life.

Still riding the crest of the French New Wave, François Truffaut followed his huge 1962 success, the delightful Jules and Jim, with his fourth feature, the unexpectedly somber drama, The Soft Skin. In fact, it shares elements with the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock. Truffaut presents us with the cautionary story of a successful and respected publisher and writer (Jean Desailly) who meets and begins an affair with a flight attendant (Françoise Dorléac). The man is also married with a young daughter. The development of the tale emphasizes the danger involved in embarking on such an act. How do you keep it a secret when you’re well known? How do you manage to live the double life and deceive your wife? Truffaut directs the piece as if it were indeed a crime drama. The suspense comes in watching Desailly dig a hole so deep that he can’t get out of it. And then the violent ending—well, let’s just say it’s a shocker.

During the period between Jules and Jim and the making of The Soft Skin, Truffaut had collaborated with Hitchcock on the landmark interview book Hitchcock/Truffaut, so it’s not surprising that the French director was influenced by the master of suspense. A video essay extra on the disc by filmmaker and critic Kent Jones examines these traits and the many ways filmmakers can be influenced in general ways by other artists. The Soft Skin could very well work with a Bernard Herrmann score, but instead Georges Delerue delivers an appropriately melancholic and tragic soundtrack that fits beautifully with the events unfolding before us.

Desailly is very good as a man blinded by lust but bound by social convention. Dorléac, who was the elder sister of Catherine Deneuve, is, of course, gorgeous, and Truffaut’s cinematographer Raoul Coutard allows the camera to lovingly dwell on her. Ironically, Truffaut left his own wife after the completion of The Soft Skin and began dating Dorléac. Dorléac was an actress on the same professional trajectory as her sister when her life was cut short in a disastrous automobile accident in France in 1967. One can only imagine how Dorléac’s career might have blossomed and how she would have aged along with Deneuve. Like her sister, Dorléac would have been a timeless beauty.

The Soft Skin may not be one of Truffaut’s masterworks, but it is one of his more solid efforts that was perhaps not sufficiently appreciated at the time of its release. It is, in fact, a sincere, atmospheric, and wistfully sad drama about the many ways that love can cause terrible pain. The picture’s warning to would-be adulterers is quite clear—don’t do it.

Criterion’s new high-definition digital restoration beautifully shows off Coutard’s sharp black and white imagery. Interestingly, a few New Wave traits—freeze frames and jump cuts—still linger in Truffaut’s work in ’64.

Other extras include the excellent 1999 documentary Monsieur Truffaut Meets Mr. Hitchcock, about the historic interviews conducted for Truffaut’s book; an interview with Truffaut from 1965 about the film; and an audio commentary by screenwriter Jean-Louis Richard and Truffaut scholar Serge Toubiana.

The Soft Skin reveals a different side of Truffaut than you may be accustomed to. Check it out.

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