Manichaean Art Criticism?

I was thinking about Francois Truffaut today, as I do occasionally, but probably not as often as he deserves, and was googling for cool pictures of him to add to my cool pictures folder.  In the course of this I found that Google, rather bizarrely decided that a picture of Jean-Luc Goddard was actually of Truffaut.  It was also a cool picture and so was added to my folder, but it was not Truffaut, although they were obviously closely connected, at least in their early days: both writing for Cahiers du Cinema, Goddard filming Truffaut's script for A Bout De Souffle, etc.  This unwitting juxtaposition from Google lead me to ponder the differences between them and the fact that this pairing applies to so many other pairs of closely associated artists.

Looking at their films objectively, from a purely technical and cinematic perspective (with the cold detachment of Godard's 'cinema is truth 24 times a second') it seems to me that Godard is the better film-maker, but as a lover of movies it is obvious that Truffaut made the better films.  There are five or six of Godard's movies that I love, but there are many more of his that are virtually unwatchable, whereas even some of Truffaut's weaker films are still great and his masterpieces are infused with a love and compassion which make him one of my heroes.  In short Godard is the better film maker, but Truffaut is the better human being.

This contrast also applies to pairings such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald and Brett Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney.  In each case the former is probably the better philosopher/writer, but the later is the better human being and so their books are the ones I prefer to read.