François TRUFFAUT (1932-1984). Signed autograph... - Lot 66 - Ader

François TRUFFAUT (1932-1984). Signed autograph manuscript, Le vieux marin rieur, 1981; 3 pages in-4 with erasures and corrections (rusty paper clip marks at the top, and a small wetness on the title). Homage to the American filmmaker Tay Garnett (1894-1977). This text served as a preface to Tay Garnett's posthumous book, A Century of Cinema (Hatier, 1981)". In the film by Fellini Otto and Mezzo the director Guido asks an old machinist, a former sailor, to perform a few tap dance steps before his eyes. Rather than Guido himself, Tay Garnett looks like a graceful sailor. He was thin, chiseled, laughing. Like Hitchcock, he had started out in the cinema, writing intertitles for silent films. Like almost all his silent colleagues, he was a sportsman, an aviator, an adventurer, like them he was an intellectual without wanting to [...]. In Hollywood, where everyone is rich Tay Garnett was the only poor filmmaker, he had spent his money with friends and with women. When Henri Langlois sent him a plane ticket to the Tours Film Festival in 1977, Tay Garnett accepted without suspecting that he would learn of Langlois' death when he landed at Roissy. He also saw this stay in France as an opportunity to complete the book, which he never stopped enriching as if he could not bring himself to part with it. It is a very normally posthumous book that you hold in your hands. The idea had come to him the day John Ford died, this pious work could logically end only with the death of its author, the death of Tay Garnett, one of our masters".