The Wild Child

From 1970, The Wild Child is a very interesting and compelling film by Francois Truffaut that examines a true story, an example of the "wild child," a human being that has lived without connection to any other people.

Set in the turn of the 18th century France, the film is about the Wild Boy of Aveyron, a feral boy of about eleven or twelve who was found living on his own, naked, surviving on what ever food he could find. No one ever found out his past, but assumptions were he was abandoned. He is taken to the society for deaf and mute children, though it is discovered he can hear. He is to be turned over to the asylum for idiots when a doctor (Truffaut himself) takes personal charge of the boy and seeks to teach him to be civilized.

The film is presented almost in a documentary style, as the plot mostly concerns the journal of Truffaut, who struggles to teach the boy, as well as coming to grips with whether he is doing the right thing. Over the course of the film we the audience must decide just what "civilized" means. Do we really need to eat with a spoon? Or wear shoes? At times the doctor doubts what he is doing, and wonders if Victor, as he names the boy, would be better off back in the woods.

The Wild Child is also visually interesting. Photographed by Nestor Almendros, who would go on to have a long and fruitful association with Truffaut, the film has the look of a silent--black and white, and with frequent use of irising. The lead performance, by a child named Jean-Pierre Cargol, is quite astonishing, and Truffaut said that he played the part of the doctor not out of vanity, but because he believed it would be better if he worked with the child without an intermediary.

The film can lead to fascinating discussion, as it also ties in with the Enlightenment, and the writing of men such a Rousseau and Montesquieu, as well as the work of naturalists and transcendentalists. Truffaut was inspired to make the film after reading about such cases throughout history, but the case of Victor happened at an interesting time in history, on the cusp of breakthroughs in scientific thought.