
And certainly, the natural charisma of Jean-Pierre Cargol, who plays Victor, encourages an empathetic perspective. The initially filthy forest fellow—all matted hair and scraped limbs when, at ten or so years of age, he is captured in the wild and delivered to the care of deaf-and-dumb expert Dr. Jean Itard (played by Truffaut himself)—exhibits real wide-eyed charm as he sticks his head out of a hansom cab (rather like a dog at an open car window), grinning as the wind whips through his hair, or when he ponders the light and heat of a candle.

That's because by the end of the film its point is absolutely made, almost as in a mathematical proof. Much of Itard's effort is spent trying to teach the boy to speak, to recognize objects by name, to learn the alphabet...to learn his own name. In this, Itard is unfailingly kind and largely patient, but also frustrated. But he is also concerened with socializing Victor, giving him a sense of self, and, finally, making him a moral creature. He needs for Victor to understand the difference between right and wrong. He initiates a system of rewards and punishments. Does Victor merely accept this system as something rote, or can he understand what he'll be rewarded or punished for?
Itard never expresses a philosophy of morality. He doesn't evoke Rousseau, who was buried in the Pantheon a few years before the action of the film begins. More importantly, he never evokes God, either. What he does—and it's terribly painful for him—is subject Victor to an injustice.
Victor's indignant reaction is the climax of the film, and a beautiful, elegant, and, yes, moving refutation of the notion that without theism, moral chaos is inevitable. It was never discussed as such at the time of its initial release, but in today's God wars, Truffaut's film is a potent parable for non-believers.
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The Wild Child plays at New York's Film Forum through Nov. 13