François Truffaut, obsessed with Isabelle Adjani

Isabelle Adjani and François Truffaut, in “The Story of Adèle H.”, directed by François Truffaut in 1975. — Isabelle Adjani and François Truffaut, in "The Story of Adèle H.", directed by François Truffaut in 1975. PROD DB/LES FILMS DU CAROSSE

What's he doing here? When Isabelle Adjani saw François Truffaut (1932-1984) in September 1974 at the premiere of Claude Pinoteau's The Slap , she recognized him immediately. He had been at the top of his game since La Nuit américaine , released barely a year earlier, which had won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in Hollywood. But neither Claude Pinoteau nor the two actors who flanked Adjani, Lino Ventura and Annie Girardot, belonged to his film family. This comedy even symbolized the quality French cinema once vilified by the Young Turks of the New Wave, including François Truffaut.

If Truffaut is in the room, it is for her. He takes great care to greet the young actress, on the verge of achieving her first major popular success on screen with The Slap . What she does not know is that she has become the director's obsession. He became obsessed with her after discovering her, in May 1973, on television, in the recording of The School for Wives , staged at the Comédie-Française. Never, he confides, has an actress managed to make him cry in front of the small screen. He feels the need to "shoot with her very quickly, urgently."

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