An ingenious and poignant experience, Francois Truffaut's fascinating The Wild Child is based on a real-life 18th-century behavioural scientist's efforts to turn a feral boy into a civilised specimen. In a piece of resonant casting that immediately turns this story into an echo of the creative process, Truffaut himself plays Dr Itard, a specialist in the teaching of the deaf. Itard takes in a young lad (Jean-Pierre Cargol) found to have been living like an animal in the woods all his life. In the spirit of social experiment, Itard uses rewards and punishments to retool... the boy's very existence into something that will impress the world. Beautifully photographed in black and white and making evocative use of such charmingly antiquated filmmaking methods as the iris shot, The Wild Child has a semi-documentary form that barely veils Truffaut's confessional slant. What does it mean to turn the raw material of life into a monument to one's own experience and bias? The question has all sorts of intriguing reverberations when one considers that Truffaut's own wild childhood was rescued by love of the cinema and that a degree of verisimilitude factors into his films starring Jean-Pierre Leaud--the troubled lad who grew up in Truffaut's work from The 400 Blows onward. (The Wild Child is dedicated to Leaud.) --Tom Keogh [show more]
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Francois Truffaut directs and stars in this true story of a boy found living alone in France in the 18th century. The boy is admitted to the National Institiute for the Deaf and Dumb in Paris, where his case is taken up by Doctor Itard (Truffaut). However, hard times lie ahead for both the boy and the doctor, when his integration into society proves harder than expected.
Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 or region free DVD player in order to play Francois Truffaut directs and stars in this true story of a boy found living alone in France in the 18th century The boy is admitted to the National Institiute for the Deaf and Dumb in Paris where his case is taken up by Doctor Itard (Truffaut) However hard times lie ahead for both the boy and the doctor when his integration into society proves harder than expected
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