If there’s one thing you can count on Quentin Tarantino to do, it’s run his mouth about film legends who aren’t alive to defend themselves, and the man is at it again with a hot take on French New Wave icon François Truffaut. In an interview in Sight & Sound’s September issue, Tarantino compared Claude Chabrol to Truffaut (who, it must be said, popularized auteur theory). “(Chabrol’s) thrillers are drastically better than the abysmal Truffaut-Hitchcock movies, which I think are just awful,” Tarantino said. “I’m not a Truffaut fan that much anyway. There are some exceptions, the main one being The Story of Adele H. But for the most part, I feel about Truffaut like I feel about Ed Wood. I think he’s a very passionate, bumbling amateur.” Ouch. Tarantino previously called out Truffaut in the novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in which Cliff Booth goes on an extended tangent about Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim, calling the latter “a fucking drag.” Find Tarantino’s full interview here.
