La peau douce (1964)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

François Truffaut

Writers:

François Truffaut (screenplay) &
Jean-Louis Richard (screenplay)

Release Date:

20 April 1964 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

Pierre Lachenay is a well-known publisher and lecturer, married with Franca and father of Sabine, around 10. He meets an air hostess, Nicole. They start a love affair, which Pierre is hiding, but he cannot stand staying away from her.

Plot Keywords:

Love Affair | Reims | Adultery | Paris France | Motel

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Jean Desailly	...	Pierre Lachenay
Françoise Dorléac	...	Nicole (as Françoise Dorleac)
Nelly Benedetti	...	Franca Lachenay
Daniel Ceccaldi	...	Clément
Laurence Badie	...	Ingrid
Philippe Dumat	...	Directeur cinéma Reims
Paule Emanuele	...	Odile
Maurice Garrel	...	Bontemps
Sabine Haudepin	...	Sabine Lachenay
Dominique Lacarrière	...	La secrétaire Dominique
Jean Lanier	...	Michel
Pierre Risch	...	Chanoine
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
François Truffaut	...	Le pompiste (voice)

Also Known As:

Angústia (Portugal)
The Soft Skin (USA)

Runtime:

113 min | France:119 min (director's cut) | Portugal:110 min (cut version)

Country:

France | Portugal

Language:

French | Portuguese | English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | France:U | Sweden:15 | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Lisbon, Portugal

Company:

Les Films du Carrosse

Trivia:

The man who hassles Nelly Benedetti in the street is the co-writer of the film, Jean-Louis Richard. When they were filming, passers-by came to Benedetti's assistance and had to be fended off.

Goofs:

Continuity: Pierre and Nicole are in a hotel elevator approaching the 8th floor, Pierre is on the right side. The following shot from outside the elevator shows Pierre on the opposite side.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in La nuit américaine (1973)

Soundtrack:

Symphonie de Jouets (Toy Symphony)

One of Truffaut's most accomplished films

Truffaut filmed La Peau Douce immediately after the international success of "Jules et Jim". Released at the heyday of the nouvelle vague, critics and audiences panned the film as a futile resort to bourgeois classicism after the unconventional antics of his previous masterwork.

They could not have been more mistaken. Time has treated La Peau Douce better than most of his later efforts. It is definitely a triumph of direction with each scene being carefully planned and meticulously structured, not unlike a Hitchcock movie. In practice, Truffaut transposes Hitchcock's mechanisms of suspense into a seemingly trivial story concerning the illicit love affair of a distinguished editor/author with a younger stewardess and its withering consequences. The characters and the milieu of the story are effortless evoked, but the main joy is derived from the visual inventiveness that Truffaut shows in scene after scene. It's a triumph of a purely cinematic mode of expression, which Truffaut was one of the few who had really mastered it.