The Green Room

The Green Room (La Chambre verte, 1978) is a François Truffaut drama you can watch online on iFILM. Truffaut directs and takes the lead himself, playing Julien Davenne, a journalist scarred by the First World War who cannot let go of his dead wife.

Davenne writes obituaries for a fading magazine and lives almost entirely among the dead, treating them with more tenderness than the living. He restores a derelict chapel and fills it with candles — one flame for every departed friend he has loved. Into this private cult of memory steps Cecilia (Nathalie Baye), the only person who truly understands him, though her own loyalty to the past carries a price.

The film draws on three Henry James stories, among them The Altar of the Dead. Truffaut called it less a picture about death than one about our feelings for those who are gone, and about whether we need to forget. Hushed, candle-lit and intensely personal, it asks you to sit with grief rather than race past it. Stream The Green Room (1978) online on iFILM.