Truffaut, François (fräNswä` trüfō`), 1932–84, French film director and critic. As a critic, he was noted for his promotion of the auteur theory. The director, he believed, should have creative control over all aspects of the film. He was one of the first of the "new wave" directors of the late 1950s and 60s to make films that were less studio-bound and script-dominated. Truffaut's films are noted for their surface charm, which often masks a highly ironic, even bitter, undercurrent. His films The 400 Blows (1959), Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979) comprise a kind of filmed autobiography. Other notable works include Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1961), The Wild Child (1971), Day for Night (1973), The Story of Adele H. (1975), and The Last Metro (1978). He occasionally took leading roles in his own films. He acted only once under another director, in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

Bibliography

See biography by S. de Baecque and S. Toubiana (tr. 1999); the film François Truffaut: Stolen Portraits (1993), dir. by S. Toubiana and M. Pascal; studies by G. Petrie (1970), C. G. Crisp (1972), and A. Insdorf (1987). Truffaut collected his criticism in The Films in My Life (1975; tr. 1978).

Truffaut, François

(born Feb. 6, 1932, Paris, France—died Oct. 21, 1984, Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris) French film director and critic. As a film critic for the avant-garde Cahiers du Cinéma, he advocated the auteur theory and helped establish the New Wave movement. His first feature film was the semi-autobiographical The 400 Blows (1959), a portrait of a delinquent boy, that won him international acclaim. Influenced by Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock, he made varied and admired movies such as Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1961), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Stolen Kisses (1968), The Wild Child (1969), Day for Night (1973, Academy Award), The Story of Adèle H. (1975), and The Last Metro (1980). His films record life's grayness and flatness with a sense of resignation quite distinct from platitude or petulant nihilism.