Trailer
Plot summary
In the summer of 1798, a woman in the Aveyron district of southern France sees a naked boy and runs off screaming. She brings hunters, who chase the child with dogs and pull him from the hole where he hides. The boy cannot speak or understand language and has lived apart from other people since an early age. He is taken to Paris and placed in a school for deaf-mutes. There Dr. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard observes him and disagrees with colleagues who call the boy an idiot; he believes the boy's mind was stunted by life without other people. Itard takes custody of the child, names him Victor, and brings him to his house outside Paris to begin teaching him.
Cast
- Nathan Milleras Baby Lemeri
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Wild Child (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Truffaut wanted a child actor who was talented and undisciplined, and first considered an unknown gifted child or a celebrity's son, thinking a younger Rudolf Nureyev would be perfect. His assistant then scouted schools in Nîmes and Marseille and found 12-year-old Romani boy Jean-Pierre Cargol, whom Truffaut hired at once; Cargol was the nephew of flamenco guitarist Manitas de Plata.
- On set, Truffaut directed first-time actor Jean-Pierre Cargol by telling him to pretend to be different animals or people in certain scenes — be "like a dog", "like a horse", or even "like Harpo Marx".
- Truffaut had scripted a sequence showing Victor struggling against the harsh winter weather of the wild, but budgetary limitations forced him to cut the scenes.
- Terrence Malick is an admirer of The Wild Child and hired its cinematographer Néstor Almendros to shoot his own film Days of Heaven.
- After considering several little-known actors, Truffaut decided to play Dr. Itard himself so that he could interact directly with the child actor playing Victor instead of depending on an intermediary.
- During the shoot, Jean-Pierre Cargol was given an 8mm camera and said he would become "the first gypsy director", though he appeared as an actor in only one more film.
