The Wild Child
| The Wild Child | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | François Truffaut |
| Produced by | Marcel Berbert |
| Written by |
François Truffaut Jean Gruault |
| Based on | The Memorandum and Report on Victor de l'Aveyron by Dr. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard |
| Starring | Jean-Pierre Cargol François Truffaut Françoise Seigner Jean Dasté |
| Music by | Antonio Vivaldi |
| Cinematography | Néstor Almendros |
| Edited by | Agnès Guillemot |
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Production
company |
Les Films du Carrosse
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| Distributed by | United Artists |
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Release date
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Running time
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85 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Box office | $800,000 1,674,771 admissions (France) |
The Wild Child (French: L'Enfant sauvage, released in the United Kingdom as The Wild Boy) is a 1970 French film by director François Truffaut. Featuring Jean-Pierre Cargol, François Truffaut, Françoise Seigner and Jean Dasté, it tells the story of a child who spends the first eleven or twelve years of his life with little or no human contact. It is based on the true events regarding the child Victor of Aveyron, reported by Jean Marc Gaspard Itard. The film sold nearly 1.5 million tickets in France.
The film opens with the statement: "This story is authentic: it opens in 1798 in a French forest."
One summer day in 1798, a naked boy of 11 or 12 years of age (Jean-Pierre Cargol) is found in a forest in the rural district of Aveyron in southern France. A woman sees him, then runs off screaming. She finds some hunters and tells them that she saw a wild boy. They hunt him down with a pack of dogs (a Beauceron, a German Shepherd, an Airedale Terrier and an English Springer Spaniel). The dogs, upon picking up the boy's scent, chase him up a tree. A branch breaks off, and the dogs attack him when he falls. He fights them off leaving one wounded, then continues to flee and hides in a hole. The dogs continue to follow his scent, eventually finding his hiding hole. The hunters arrive and force him out of the hole using smoke to cut off his air supply. After he emerges, the men grab him.
Living like a wild animal and unable to speak or understand language, the child has apparently grown up in solitude in the forest since an early age. He is brought to Paris and initially placed in a school for "deaf-mutes". Dr. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard (François Truffaut) observes the boy and believes that he is neither deaf nor, as some of his colleagues believe, an "idiot". Itard thinks the boy's behavior is a result of his deprived environment, and that he can be educated.
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