Director: Francois Truffaut
Screenplay: Francois Truffaut, Jean Gruault, based on The Memorandum and Report on Victor de l’Aveyron
by Jean Marc Gaspard Itard
Starring: Jean-Pierre Cargol, Francois Truffaut, Francoise Seigner
Country: France
Running Time: 85 minutes
Year: 1970
Certificate: U
The films of the great French New Wave director Francois Truffaut have always been acclaimed for their compassion and empathy, but amongst his filmography there are those I believe that belong in a special category all their own. This group comprises Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent/Anne and Muriel (1971), The Story of Adele H (1975), La Chambre Vert (1978), but first and foremost amongst them is The Wild Child/ L’Enfant Sauvage (1970), which is being released by Radiance Films on the 26th of January 2026 for the first time on blu ray in the UK.
This quartet of films draws upon the same deep well of personal melancholy that distinguishes them from all of Truffaut’s other work. Nothing, no matter how joyful or warm-hearted aspects of these films may be, can ever distract from the emotional abyss that lies at the core of each of them. This is especially true with The Wild Child, an extraordinary adaptation of a real-life case of a feral child found in rural France in the late 18th century. The real Victor of Aveyron was discovered by hunters in 1798, and was treated both as a celebrity by the media of the day, and as a freakshow oddity by those who were charged with “educating” him. Even in the post-revolutionary era in France, where progressive ideas had flourished, reactionary concepts still prevailed.
The Wild Child was a passion project for Truffaut, who took years to research and fully realise the film, and it marks several important developments for him as a creative force. Despite his angry disavowal of literary adaptation as a film critic, Truffaut and fellow screenwriter Jean Gruault freely adapted the work of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, the doctor who cared for and educated Victor over a period of five years, as well as contextual evidence to round out what in essence was a non-narrative. It was also Truffaut’s first collaboration with the brilliant Spanish director of photography Nestor Almendros, with whom he would work with for many years to come. His stark black and white cinematography and use of devices such as iris dissolves evoke early silent cinema, befitting a film where silence is almost a character in itself.
The film itself is remarkable attempt to reconstruct a world where what was once thought to be ‘savage’ collided with enlightenment notions of ‘civilization,’ where those at the cutting edge of scientific methods are left bewildered and as in the dark as those they are trying to socialize. Considered an ‘idiot’ by those in charge at the National Institute of the Deaf in Paris, Dr. Itard removes him from the Institute and educates him at his home, with the help of his housekeeper Madame Guerin (Francoise Seigner).
In contrast to films like The Elephant Man and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, where David Lynch and Werner Herzog emphasize the social environments of both Merrick and Hauser, Truffaut pares down the story to its base elements of Itard and Victor together, and the daily trial and error of communicating and educating him. In this sense The Wild Child becomes a chamber piece. The crucial decision to cast himself as Dr. Itard was a masterstroke by Truffaut. What was at first a decision made from necessity has over time become one that no actor was qualified to undertake. No one other than Truffaut could have played Dr Itard; his performance conveys a quiet authority of a man faced with the realisation that he is both a teacher and a new father.
Each small success and momentary setback is shared by Victor himself, portrayed with a remarkable physicality by Jean-Pierre Cargol. As Victor, Cargol is a magnetic screen presence, gradually transforming from the feral child foraging in woodland to a semi-socialized young boy devoted to those around him. And yet his uncomprehending gaze and near-permanent silence are completely unnerving. Itard can never definitively answer important questions that plague educators to this very day: how do we really know what those we teach are really learning? What do children really understand? The gap between what Victor learns and what he might truly understand lies at the heart of The Wild Child, an unbridgeable space that keeps Itard and Victor at a distance from each other, no matter how close they seem.
LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES
High-Definition digital transfer
Uncompressed mono PCM audio
Archival on-set interview with François Truffaut (1970, 4 mins)
Archival television interview with François Truffaut and author Lucien Malson (1969, 10 mins)
New interview with critic and author Ginette Vincendeau (2025, 19 mins)
Trailer
Newly improved English subtitle translation
Reversible sleeve featuring artwork based on original promotional materials
Limited edition booklet featuring archival writing by Truffaut and Almendros and new writing by Adam Scovell
Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
The special features for The Wild Child are few but of especially high quality: a short on-set report from the filming of The Wild Child, a short but fascinating TV interview with Truffaut and author Lucien Malson, whose work on feral children proved invaluable to the director in making the film, and lastly an interview with French cinema critic Ginette Vincendeau, who describes The Wild Child as ‘a beautiful and mysterious film’. She also provides excellent contextual information about the film and its place in Truffaut’s filmography, as well as an interesting opinion on the meaning of the final image of the film. The booklet wasn’t made available to me for this review.
At just 85 minutes, The Wild Child is no mere sliver of a film. It is one of Francois Truffaut’s most personal and greatly underrated cinematic achievements.