François Roland Truffaut was a French filmmaker, actor and critic, widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. With a career of more than 25 years, he is an icon of the French film industry. As a young man, he came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin, who hired him to write for his Cahiers du Cinéma. It was there that he became an exponent of the auteur theory, which said the director is the true author of the film. The 400 Blows (1959), starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Truffaut's alter-ego Antoine Doinel, was a defining film of the New Wave. Truffaut supplied the story for another milestone of the movement, Breathless (1960), directed by his Cahiers colleague Jean-Luc Godard.
The cinema of France comprises the film industry and its film productions, whether made within the nation of France or by French film production companies abroad. It is the oldest and largest precursor of national cinemas in Europe, with primary influence also on the creation of national cinemas in Asia.
Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu is a French actor, known to be one of the most prolific in film history. Icon of French cinema, a world star in the same way as Alain Delon or Brigitte Bardot, he has completed over 250 films since 1967, almost exclusively as a lead. Depardieu has worked with over 150 film directors whose most notable collaborations include Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Maurice Pialat, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol, Ridley Scott, and Bernardo Bertolucci. He is the second highest-grossing actor in the history of French cinema behind Louis de Funès. As of January 2022, his body of work also includes countless television productions, 18 stage plays, 16 records and 9 books. He is known for having portrayed numerous leading historical and fictitious figures of the Western world including Georges Danton, Joseph Stalin, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Auguste Rodin, Cyrano de Bergerac, Jean Valjean, Edmond Dantès, Christopher Columbus, Obélix, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac, known professionally as Catherine Deneuve, is a French actress. She is considered one of the greatest European actresses on film. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her as one of the greatest actors of the 21st century.
The 400 Blows is a 1959 French coming-of-age drama film, and the directorial debut of François Truffaut, who also co-wrote the film. Shot in the anamorphic format DyaliScope, the film stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, and Claire Maurier. One of the defining films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. Written by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy, the film is about Antoine Doinel, a semi-autobiographical character and a misunderstood adolescent in Paris who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior. It was filmed on location in Paris and Honfleur.
The Story of Adèle H. is a 1975 French historical drama film directed by François Truffaut, and starring Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, and Sylvia Marriott. Written by Truffaut, Jean Gruault, and Suzanne Schiffman, the film is about Adèle Hugo, the daughter of writer Victor Hugo, whose obsessive unrequited love for a military officer leads to her downfall. The story is based on Adèle Hugo's diaries. Filming took place on location in Guernsey and Senegal.
Jean-Pierre Léaud, ComM is a French actor best known for being an important figure of the French New Wave and his portrayal of Antoine Doinel in a series of films by François Truffaut, beginning with The 400 Blows (1959). He has worked with Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, and Jacques Rivette, as well as other notable directors such as Jean Cocteau, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, Jerzy Skolimowski, and Aki Kaurismäki.
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often credited with providing the ideas that led to the development of the auteur theory.
Jacques Rivette was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. He made twenty-nine films, including L'Amour fou (1969), Out 1 (1971), Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), and La Belle Noiseuse (1991). His work is noted for its improvisation, loose narratives, and lengthy running times.
Small Change is a 1976 French film directed by François Truffaut about childhood innocence and child abuse. In English-speaking countries outside North America, the film is known as Pocket Money. The film had a total of 1,810,280 admissions in France, making it one of Truffaut's most successful films. Only his films The 400 Blows and The Last Metro were more popular in France.
Mississippi Mermaid is a 1969 romantic crime drama film written and directed by François Truffaut and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve. Adapted from the 1947 novel Waltz into Darkness by William Irish, the film follows a tobacco planter on the island of Réunion who becomes engaged through correspondence to a woman he does not know. When she arrives, it is not the same woman in the photo, but he marries her anyway.
Shoot the Piano Player is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film directed by François Truffaut that stars Charles Aznavour as the titular pianist with Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, and Michèle Mercier as the three women in his life. It is based on the novel Down There by David Goodis.
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1966 British dystopian drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, and Cyril Cusack. Based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury, the film takes place in a controlled society in an oppressive future, in which the government sends out firemen to destroy all literature to prevent revolution and thinking. This was Truffaut's first colour film and his only non French-language film. At the 27th Venice International Film Festival, Fahrenheit 451 was nominated for the Golden Lion.
The Green Room is a 1978 French historical drama film directed by François Truffaut, based on the 1895 short story "The Altar of the Dead" by Henry James, in which a man becomes obsessed with the dead people in his life and builds a memorial to them. It is also based on two other works by James: the 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle and the 1896 short story "The Way It Came". It was Truffaut's seventeenth feature film as a director and the third and last of his own films in which he acted in a leading role. It stars Truffaut, Nathalie Baye, Jean Dasté and Patrick Maléon.
François Truffaut: Stolen Portraits is a 1993 French documentary film directed by Michel Pascal and Serge Toubiana, about the film director François Truffaut. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
A list of books and essays written by and about François Truffaut:
Leather-Nose is a 1936 novel by the French writer Jean de La Varende, about Achille Perrier de La Genevraye, an officer during the Napoleonic Wars and the author's grand uncle. An English translation by R. Wills Thomas was published in 1938.
Paul V. Beckley was an American film critic, best known for his work with the New York Herald Tribune from 1941 to 1965. Before joining the Tribune in New York City he worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Journal. In 1965 it was reported that he had joined the Radio-Television Daily, and he became a senior writer for the 6 o'clock CBS news. He is buried at Pinelawn Memorial Park.
Ignace Morgenstern was a Hungarian-born French film producer. He was the owner of Cocinor, one of the largest French film distributors of the 1950s.
