A child of 10/12 years was found in the jungle. A caucasian human boy. He didn't show any signs of civilization. Those who found him, rescued him and took him back to civilization. The news of a boy discovered in the jungle spread like wildfire all over the country. The class literate in all sort of ways wanted to know how the cognitive abilities of the boy developed being all alone and isolated from the civilization. The rest of the people just wanted to see a human-looking monkey in the cage—who couldn't stand up straight, crawled on all four hands and legs and get a kick out of it. The boy had long dusty hair, nails. Never cared for, never been cleaned. The biggest handicap was that, the boy couldn't talk or hear anything for that matter. As a result, he was sent to a hospital that specialized in deaf and mutes.
Everyday any number of curious people gathered outside the hospital to see this strange creature—who was both human and non-human. Even the other deaf and mute kids of the hospital started to pick on the boy. One of the doctors and a scholar of the institution (played by Truffaut himself) saw that it was a folly, the boy would never be able to cope in the conventional way. He filed an application, took the boy under his wing and brought him to his own home. The boy would go through cognitive evaluation and formal education there. A name is given to the boy, Victor.
L'enfant Sauvage literally means 'the wild child' in English. The plot may seem unoriginal but the key difference in this case is, unlike Tarzan or Mowgli, the plot of the film is based on real events. At the end of the eighteenth century, a boy was found in the jungle. Dr. Jean Itard took responsibility for him. He conducted numerous studies on the boy's psychological condition and tried to make him civilized through education. He documented all of his efforts. Truffaut played as Itard in this film, who also wrote and directed the film.
Truffaut's films are like river flows, advancing smoothly. There are no gimmicks, no shocking climax; may it be a romantic drama, or a revenge thriller. The Bride Wore Black can be used for for an instance. Even though Truffaut made it as a tribute to Hitchcock, a murder thriller no less, it remained distinctively as a Truffaut film. He made films about adolescence before, The Wild Child will fall in that line.
