It's been 15 years since François Truffaut's death, and it seems that this most emblematic and accessible of the New Wavers is weathering an obligatory backlash. Indeed, compared to the singular voices of Godard, Rivette, and Rohmer, Truffaut seems troubled, mired by success, overburdened by genre. He's been criticized for romanticism, for wanting to please his audience, for being too enraptured with children, for obeying a cinephilia he couldn't quite control. He is the New Wave's Steinbeck, beloved by the middle class, formally outbid by his own Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald, and eventually dismissed by a cognoscenti more enraptured by the restless reinvention of the art than by its heartfelt... More >>>