Truffaut-ing

 Of course, being nostalgic and old, I can't stop falling for Truffaut's words:

"When I was a critic, films were often more alive though less "intelligent"

and "personal" than today. I put the words in quotes precisely

because I hold that there was no lack of intelligent directors at that

time, but that they were induced to mask their personalities so as

to preserve a universality in their films. Intelligence stayed behind

the camera; it didn't try to be in evidence on the screen. At the

same time, it must be admitted that more important and profound

things were said around the dinner table in real life than were reflected

in the dialogue of the films that were being made, and that more

daring things took place in bedrooms and elsewhere than in the movies'

love scenes. If we had known life only through the movies, we could

quite believe that babies came from a kiss on the lips with the mouth closed.
(...)
  

  As for erotic or pornographic films, without being a passionate
fan I believe they are in expiation, or at least in payment of a debt
that we owe for sixty years of cinematographic lies about love. I am
one of the thousands of his readers who was not only entranced but
helped through life by the work of Henry Miller, and I suffered at
the idea that cinema lagged so far behind his books as well as behind
reality. Unhappily, I still cannot cite an erotic film that is the equivalent
of Henry Miller's writing (the best films, from Bergman to Bertolucci,
have been pessimistic), but, after all, freedom for the cinema is still
quite new. Also, we must consider that the starkness of images poses
far more difficult problems than those posed by the written word.

 Anyone can be a film critic. The apprentice supposedly need not
possess a tenth of the knowledge that would be demanded of a critic
of literature, music or painting. A director must live with the fact
that his work will be called to judgment by someone who has never
seen a film of Murnau's."