enfant sauvage

/ ɑ̃fɑ̃ sovaʒ /

noun

1. a person given to naive, undisciplined, or unpredictable behaviour, largely because of youth and inexperience

Word History and Origins

Origin of enfant sauvage¹

C20: literally: wild child

Example Sentences

The French filmmaker François Truffaut, however, sent an illustrated, signed book about his 1969 film “L’Enfant Sauvage.”

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Watching L'Enfant sauvage again, I am still startled by its beauty, its restraint, its presiding clarity.

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In L'Enfant sauvage, Truffaut himself played Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, the young man who educated the wild boy, teaching him language, attentiveness and, in however flawed a way, connection.

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Truffaut's early films manifest L'Enfant sauvage's fascination with motion and stasis.

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This month's opening section looks at movies and documentaries about scientists, mixing classics like Frankenstein with obscurities like Truffaut's L'Enfant Sauvage, Topol as Galileo and The Great Moment, Preston Sturges's un-soporific story of the Boston dentist who discovered anaesthetic.

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