L'Enfant sauvage

The Wild Child (French: L'Enfant sauvage, released in the United Kingdom as The Wild Boy) (1970) is a French film by director François Truffaut. One summer day in 1798, a naked boy eleven or twelve years of age (Jean-Pierre Cargol) is found in a forest in the rural district of Aveyron in southern France. Living like a wild animal and unable to speak or understand language, the child has apparently grown up in solitude in the forest since an early... more

The Wild Child (French: L'Enfant sauvage, released in the United Kingdom as The Wild Boy) (1970) is a French film by director François Truffaut. One summer day in 1798, a naked boy eleven or twelve years of age (Jean-Pierre Cargol) is found in a forest in the rural district of Aveyron in southern France. Living like a wild animal and unable to speak or understand language, the child has apparently grown up in solitude in the forest since an early age. He is brought to Paris and initially placed in a school for "deaf-mutes". Dr. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard (François Truffaut) observes the boy and believes that he is neither deaf nor, as some of his colleagues do, an "idiot". Itard thinks the boy's behavior is a result of his deprived environment, and that he can be educated. Itard takes custody of the boy, whom he eventually names Victor, and removes him to his house on the outskirts of Paris. There, under the patient tutelage of the doctor and his housekeeper (Françoise Seigner), Victor... less