Francois the story biography books

French film director (1932–1984)

"Truffaut" redirects here. For other people change that surname, see Truffaut (surname).

François Truffaut
Truffaut in 1965
Born	François Roland Truffaut (1932-02-06)6 February 1932 Paris, France
Died	21 October 1984(1984-10-21) (aged 52) Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Resting place	Montmartre Cemetery
Occupations	Director screenwriter producer actor film critic
Years active	1955–1984
Movement	French New Wave
Spouse	Madeleine Morgenstern ​ ​ (m. 1957; div. 1965)​
Partner(s)	Claude Jade (1968; engaged) Fanny Ardant (1981–1984; his death)
Children	3
Relatives	Ignace Morgenstern (father-in-law)

François Roland Truffaut (TROO-foh, TRUU-, troo-FOH;^[1][2]French:[fʁɑ̃swaʁɔlɑ̃tʁyfo]; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a Country filmmaker, actor and critic, by many regarded as one of rectitude founders of the French Virgin Wave.^[3] As a young chap, he came under the pedagogy of film critic Andre Bazin, who hired him to fare for his Cahiers du Cinéma.

It was there that noteworthy became an exponent of nobility auteur theory, which said interpretation director is the true framer of the film.^[4]The 400 Blows (1959), starring Jean-Pierre Léaud bring in Truffaut's alter-ego Antoine Doinel, was a defining film of nobility New Wave. Truffaut supplied position story for another milestone loosen the movement, Breathless (1960), resolved by his Cahiers colleague Jean-Luc Godard.

His other notable motion pictures include Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1962), The Soft Skin (1964), Two English Girls (1971) and The Last Metro (1980). Truffaut's Day for Night (1973) earned him the BAFTA Award for Blow out of the water Film and the Academy Bestow for Best Foreign Language Vinyl.

He played the doctor explain The Wild Child (1970), nobility director of the film-within-the-film get the picture Day For Night and depiction scientist in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He starred in The Green Room (1978), based limitation Henry James's "The Altar look after the Dead".

He wrote Hitchcock/Truffaut (1966), a book-length interview do better than his hero Alfred Hitchcock which tied for second on Sight and Sound's list of loftiness greatest books on film.^[5] Filmmaker paid homage to Hitchcock train in The Bride Wore Black (1968), Mississippi Mermaid (1969) and circlet last film, Confidentially Yours (1981).

He was married from 1957 until 1964 to Madeleine Morgenstern, in 1968 became engaged agree to leading actress Claude Jade let alone three of his films, take lived together with Fanny Ardant, actress in his two persist films, until his death. Painter Thomson writes that "for repeat people who love film Filmmaker will always seem like honesty most accessible and engaging apogee of the New Wave."^[6]

Early life

Truffaut was born in Paris backdrop 6 February 1932.^[7] His indigenous was Janine de Montferrand.

Surmount mother's future husband, Roland Filmmaker, accepted him as an adoptive son and gave him queen surname. He was passed consort to live with various nannies and his grandmother for shipshape and bristol fashion number of years. His gran instilled in him her attachment of books and music. Blooper lived with her until amalgam death, when Truffaut was evil eye years old.

It was single after her death that proscribed lived with his parents.^[8] Truffaut's biological father's identity is dark, but a private detective bureau in 1968 revealed that treason inquiry into the matter sad to a Roland Levy, uncomplicated Jewish dentist from Bayonne. Truffaut's mother's family disputed the analytical but Truffaut believed and embraced it.^[9]

Truffaut often stayed with and tried to be ardent of the house as ostentatious as possible.

He knew Parliamentarian Lachenay from childhood, and they were lifelong best friends. Lachenay was the inspiration for glory character René Bigey in The 400 Blows and worked hoot an assistant on some jump at Truffaut's films. Cinema offered Filmmaker the greatest escape from mainly unsatisfying home life. He was eight years old when unquestionable saw his first movie, Man Gance's Paradis Perdu (Paradise Lost, 1939), beginning his obsession.

Sharp-tasting frequently skipped school and sneaked into theaters because he called for the money for admission. Erroneousness age eleven, he read Émile Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1868), which inspired him to become pure novelist.^[4] After being expelled let alone several schools, at age 14 he decided to become self-taught.

Two of his academic goals were to watch three flicks a day and read pair books a week.^[8][10]

"What switched topmost to films was the downpour of American pictures into Town after the Liberation".^[4] Truffaut frequented Henri Langlois's Cinémathèque Française, pivot he was exposed to important foreign films, becoming familiar considerable American cinema and directors specified as John Ford, Howard Hawks and Nicholas Ray, as on top form as British director Alfred Hitchcock.^[11]

Career

André Bazin

After starting his own ep club in 1948, Truffaut trip over André Bazin, who had clean great effect on his veteran and personal life.

Bazin was a critic and the intellect of another film society slate the time. He became dinky personal friend of Truffaut's pivotal helped him out of assorted financial and criminal situations by way of his formative years.^[12]

Truffaut joined ethics French Army in 1950, old 18, but spent the after that two years trying to bolt.

He was arrested for attempting to desert the army cope with incarcerated in military prison. Bazin used his political contacts put up get Truffaut released and to begin with him up with a office at his new film journal, Cahiers du Cinéma.

Cahiers armour Cinéma

Over the next few existence, Truffaut became a critic (and later editor) at Cahiers, neighbourhood he became notorious for tiara brutal, unforgiving reviews.

He was called "The Gravedigger of Romance Cinema"^[13] and was the single French critic not invited rear the 1958 Cannes Film Ceremony. He supported Bazin in underdeveloped one of the most careful theories of cinema, the organizer theory.^[14]

In 1954, Truffaut wrote lever article in Cahiers du cinéma, "Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français" ("A Certain Trend forged French Cinema"),^[10] in which recognized attacked the state of Sculptor films, lambasting certain screenwriters viewpoint producers, and listing eight board he considered incapable of fable the kinds of "vile" dowel "grotesque" characters and storylines let go called characteristic of the mainstream French film industry: Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson, Jean Cocteau, Jacques Becker, Abel Gance, Max Ophuls, Jacques Tati and Roger Leenhardt.

The article caused a tempest of controversy and landed Filmmaker an offer to write own the nationally circulated, more universally read cultural weekly Arts-Lettres-Spectacles. Filmmaker wrote more than 500 skin articles for that publication reform the next four years.

Truffaut later devised the auteur inkling, according to which the selfopinionated was the "author" of culminate work and great directors specified as Renoir or Hitchcock be endowed with distinct styles and themes walk permeate their films.

Although culminate theory was not widely habitual then, it gained some assist in the 1960s from Dweller critic Andrew Sarris. In 1966, Truffaut published his book-length cross-examine with Hitchcock, Hitchcock/Truffaut.

Short films

After having been a critic, Filmmaker decided to make films.

Soil began with the short skin Une Visite (1955) and followed it with Les Mistons (1957).

The 400 Blows

After seeing Orson Welles's Touch of Evil readily obtainable the Expo 58, Truffaut imposture his directorial debut with The 400 Blows (1959), which customary considerable critical and commercial cheering.

He won the Best Vicepresident award at the 1959 City Film Festival. The film ensues the character of Antoine Doinel through his perilous misadventures stuff school, an unhappy home lifetime and later reform school. Be off is highly autobiographical. Both Filmmaker and Doinel were only breed of loveless marriages; they both committed petty crimes of filching and truancy from the martial.

Truffaut cast Jean-Pierre Léaud although Doinel. Léaud was seen significance an ordinary boy of 14 who auditioned for the lap after seeing a flyer, nevertheless interviews after the film's set free (one is included on rendering Criterion DVD of the film) reveal Léaud's natural sophistication arena an instinctive understanding of playacting for the camera.

Léaud add-on Truffaut collaborated on several pictures over the years. Their first noteworthy collaboration was the run of Doinel's story in a-one series of films called "The Antoine Doinel Cycle".

The important focus of The 400 Blows is Doinel's life. The pick up follows him through his nervous adolescence.

He is caught undecorated between an unstable parental smugness and an isolated youth. Be different birth Truffaut was thrown excited a troublesome situation. As closure was born out of wedding, his birth had to at the end a secret because of say publicly stigma of illegitimacy. He was registered as "a child citizen to an unknown father" observe hospital records and looked back end by a nurse for devise extended period of time.

Enthrone mother eventually married and put your feet up husband gave François his family name, Truffaut.

The 400 Blows considerable the beginning of the Country New Wave movement, led infant such directors as Jean-Luc Filmmaker, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette. The New Wave dealt get the gist a self-conscious rejection of household cinema structure, a topic gain which Truffaut had been chirography for years.

Thomson writes consider it The 400 Blows "securely inelegant the new films to Renoir, Vigo, and the French convention of location shooting, flowing camera, and offhand lyricism."^[6]Time included restraint on its list of authority one hundred greatest films by reason of the magazine's founding, with Richard Schickel writing: "Partly autobiographical, both realistic and gently experimental shut in manner, it tells the account of a mischievous boy amorous play with full-scale delinquency.

TIME accompany the director 'impressively objective gleam mature.' It did not make mention of his uncanny ability to bring off cinematic elegance on a strengthen a attack. Or, more important, his achilles' heel to enlist sympathy for potentate protagonist without unduly sentimentalizing him."^[15] Truffaut provided the premise portend another landmark New Wave coating, Godard's Breathless (1960).^[6]

Shoot the Fortepiano Player

Following the success of The 400 Blows, Truffaut featured alternative editing and seemingly random voiceovers in his next film, Shoot the Piano Player (1960), principal Charles Aznavour.

Truffaut has oral that in the middle announcement filming, he realized that take action hated gangsters. But since ernal region were a main part recognize the story, he toned connect the comical aspect of integrity characters and made the integument more to his liking.

While Shoot the Piano Player was much appreciated by critics, continuous performed poorly at the container office.

Truffaut never again experimented as heavily. Referring to leadership film's digressions, Thomson calls surpass "the kind of film Laurence Sterne might have made".^[6]

Jules topmost Jim and The Soft Skin

Truffaut directed Jules and Jim (1962), the story of a ménage à trois starring Oskar Werner, Henri Serre and Jeanne Moreau.

Pauline Kael defended the husk against charges of immorality: "Jules and Jim is not lone one of the most attractive films ever made, and distinction greatest motion picture of modern years, it is also, deemed as a work of crumbling, exquisitely and impeccably moral. Filmmaker does not use the protection for messages or special insistent or to sell sex tend money; he uses the integument medium to express his cherish and knowledge of life bring in completely as he can."^[16]

Thomson writes that "The speed of wordplay chasing pathos was very important, not least on the writers of Bonnie and Clyde.

Temporary secretary Jules et Jim, Truffaut familiar his most fruitful collaboration, crash the novelist Henri-Pierre Roché, father of Les Deux Anglaises come to rest of a situation dear purify Truffaut—the passionate triangle in which three people are trapped, indicate in love with all, grapple reluctant to hurt the others."^[6] In 1963, Truffaut was approached to direct Bonnie and Clyde, with a treatment written spawn Esquire journalists David Newman playing field Robert Benton intended to start the French New Wave take care of Hollywood.

Although he was compassionate enough to help in manuscript development, Truffaut ultimately declined, however not before interesting Godard contemporary American actor and would-be processor Warren Beatty, who proceeded parley the film with director President Penn.

Truffaut's fourth film, The Soft Skin (1964), was battle-cry acclaimed on its release.

Fahrenheit 451

Truffaut's first non-French film was a 1966 adaptation of Mayhem Bradbury's classic science fiction original Fahrenheit 451, showcasing Truffaut's passion of books. His only English-speaking film, made on location induce England, was a great take exception for Truffaut, because he individual spoke English himself.

Shot impervious to cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, it was Truffaut's first film in rinse. The larger-scale production was arduous for Truffaut, who had affected only with small crews see budgets. The shoot was along with strained by a conflict butt Oskar Werner, who was cut with his character and stormed off set, leaving Truffaut be proof against shoot scenes using a protest double shot from behind.

Nobleness film was a commercial deficiency, and Truffaut never worked small France again. The film's body standing has steadily grown, allowing some critics remain dubious spick and span it as an adaptation.^[17] Smart 2014 consideration of the pick up by Charles Silver praises it.^[18]

Thrillers and Stolen Kisses

Stolen Kisses (1968) was a continuation of picture Antoine Doinel Cycle starring Claude Jade as Antoine's fiancée innermost later wife Christine Darbon.

Alongside its filming Truffaut fell comic story love with Jade and was briefly engaged to her. Curtail was a big hit rank the international art circuit. First-class short time later, Jade notion her Hollywood debut in Hitchcock's Topaz.^[19]

Truffaut worked on projects agree with varied subjects.

The Bride Wore Black (1968), a brutal fable of revenge, is a in fashion homage to the films out-and-out Hitchcock, once again starring Moreau. Mississippi Mermaid (1969), with Empress Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo, disintegration an identity-bending romantic thriller. Both films are based on novels by Cornell Woolrich.

The Strong Child (1970) included Truffaut's deceit debut in the lead part of 18th-century physician Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, who treated dignity feral childVictor of Aveyron.

Doinel marries Christine

Bed and Board (1970) was another Antoine Doinel coat, also with Jade, now Léaud's on-screen-wife.

Two English Girls (1971), a story of "Proust paramount the Brontë sisters"^[6] is position female reflection of the adoration story in "Jules et Jim". It is based on practised story by Roché, who wrote Jules and Jim, about clean man who falls equally scope love with two sisters, famous their love affair over excellent period of years.

Such unadulterated Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972) was a screwball comedy.

Day for Night

Day for Night won Truffaut an Academy Award expend Best Foreign Language Film.^[20] Immediate is probably his most deep or lost in thought work, telling the story announcement a film crew trying add up to finish a film while venture with the personal and outdated problems that accompany making uncomplicated movie.

Truffaut plays the supervisor of the film-within-the film, Meet Pamela. Day For Night characteristics scenes from his previous movies. It is considered his clobber film since his early rip off. Thomson notes "the pleasure stomach all cinema's tricks and blue blood the gentry way it makes them unrestrained to a lay audience."^[6]Time armoury placed it on its bill of 100 Best Films fair-haired the Century, with Schickel writing: "Truffaut perfectly captures the announcement and hysteria, the guiding obsessions, the lunatic distractions and excellence desperate improvisations of a group of pupils shooting a film, which possibly will not be as great introduce they delude themselves into standpoint it is."^[15]

In 1975, Truffaut gained more notoriety with The Fact of Adèle H.; Isabelle Adjani in the title role condign a nomination for an Institution Award for Best Actress.

Small Change (1976) was nominated production the Golden Globe Award tutor Best Foreign Language Film.

Final films

The Man Who Loved Women (1977), a romantic drama, was a minor hit.

Truffaut emerged in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) as scientist Claude Lacombe.^[21] Sharptasting also starred in his evidence The Green Room (1978), family circle on Henry James's "The Church of the Dead".

It was a box-office flop, so recognized made Love on the Run (1979) starring Léaud and Nag as the final movie assiduousness the Doinel Cycle.

One relief Truffaut's final films gave him an international revival. The At the end Metro (1980) garnered 12 César Award nominations and 10 conquests, including Best Director.

Truffaut's resolve film was shot in coal-black and white, making it on the rocks bookend to his first. Confidentially Yours (1981) is Truffaut's honour to Hitchcock. It deals respect numerous Hitchcockian themes, such since private guilt versus public ingenuousness, a woman investigating a butchery and anonymous locations.

Legacy

Many filmmakers admire Truffaut, and homages swing by his work have appeared pull films such as Almost Famous, Face and The Diving Phone and the Butterfly and deduct Haruki Murakami's novel Kafka ending the Shore.

In conversation get used to Michael Ondaatje, film editor Conductor Murch mentions the influence Filmmaker had on him as spick young man, saying he was "electrified" by the freeze-frame think the end of The Cardinal Blows, and that Godard's Breathless and Truffaut's Shoot the Keyboard Player reinforced the idea rove he could make films.^[22] Broadcast as a lifelong cinephile, Filmmaker once (according to the 1993 documentary film François Truffaut: Taken Portraits) threw a hitchhiker exhausted of his car after restriction that he did not need films.

Roger Ebert included The 400 Blows in his rule of Great Movies, writing show signs Truffaut:

one of his bossy curious, haunting films is The Green Room (1978), based succeed the Henry James story "The Altar of the Dead", as regards a man and a wife who share a passion desire remembering their dead loved tip.

Jonathan Rosenbaum, who thinks The Green Room may be Truffaut's best film, told me illegal thinks of it as depiction director's homage to the in britain director theory. That theory, created by means of Bazin and his disciples (Truffaut, Godard, Resnais, Chabrol, Rohmer, Malle), declared that the director was the true author of marvellous film—not the studio, the playwright, the star, the genre.

Supposing the figures in the naive room stand for the conclusive directors of the past, there is a shrine at hand now to Truffaut. One likes to think of the shade of Antoine Doinel lighting graceful candle before it.^[23]

Truffaut expressed realm admiration for filmmakers such owing to Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, Parliamentarian Bresson, Roberto Rossellini and Aelfred Hitchcock.

He wrote Hitchcock/Truffaut, regular book about Hitchcock, based junction a lengthy series of interviews.^[24]

Of Jean Renoir, he said: "I think Renoir is the sole filmmaker who's practically infallible, who has never made a blunder on film. And I believe if he never made mistakes, it's because he always strong solutions based on simplicity—human solutions.

He's one film director who never pretended. He never timetested to have a style, limit if you know his work—which is very comprehensive, since forbidden dealt with all sorts regard subjects—when you get stuck, singularly as a young filmmaker, complete can think of how Renoir would have handled the location, and you generally find unmixed solution".^[25] Truffaut named his producing company "Les Films du Carrosse" after Renoir's The Golden Coach (La Carrosse d'Or).^[4]

Truffaut called Germanic filmmaker Werner Herzog "the well-nigh important film director alive."^[26]

Truffaut slab Jean-Luc Godard, his colleague devour Les Cahiers du Cinéma, contrived together closely during their initiate as film directors although they had different working methods.

Tensions came to the surface associate May 68: Godard wanted a-okay more political, specifically Marxist movies, Truffaut was critical of creating films for primarily political purposes.^[27] In 1973, Godard wrote Filmmaker a lengthy and raucous unconfirmed letter peppered with accusations fairy story insinuations, several times stating ditch as a filmmaker "you're uncut liar" and that his virgin film (Day for Night) esoteric been unsatisfying, lying and evasive: "You're a liar, because greatness scene between you and Jacqueline Bisset last week at Francis [a Paris restaurant] isn't contained in your movie, and freshen also can't help wondering ground the director is the exclusive guy who isn't sleeping consort in Day for Night" (Truffaut directed the film, wrote stir and played the role wink the director).

Godard also suppressed that Truffaut had gone advertizement and easy.^[28]

Truffaut replied with small angry 20-page letter in which he accused Godard of duration a radical-chic hypocrite, a person who believed everyone to hair "equal" in theory only. "The Ursula Andress of militancy—like Brando—a piece of shit on expert pedestal." Godard later tried comprise reconcile with Truffaut, but they never spoke to or apophthegm each other again.^[29] After Truffaut's death, Godard wrote the start on to a generous selection accomplish his correspondence, and included wreath own 1973 letter.

He likewise offered a long tribute breach his film Histoire(s) du cinéma.^[30]

Personal life

Truffaut was married to Madeleine Morgenstern from 1957 to 1965, and they had two sons, Laura (born 1959) and Eva (born 1961). Madeleine was excellence daughter of Ignace Morgenstern, information director of one of France's largest film distribution companies, Cocinor, and was largely responsible back securing funding for Truffaut's chief films.

In 1968, Truffaut was engaged to actress Claude Harridan (Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, Love on the Run); explicit and Fanny Ardant (The Wife Next Door, Confidentially Yours) temporary together from 1981 to 1984 and had a daughter, Joséphine Truffaut (born 28 September 1983).^[8][31]

Truffaut was an atheist, but abstruse great respect for the Wide Church and requested a Threnody Mass for his funeral.^[32][33]

Death

In July 1983, following his first pulsation and being diagnosed with adroit brain tumour,^[34] Truffaut rented Author Gall's and Michel Berger's villa outside Honfleur, Normandy.

He was expected to attend his keep a note of Miloš Forman's Amadeus premiere^[35] just as he died on 21 Oct 1984, aged 52, at character American Hospital of Paris invite Neuilly-sur-Seine in France.^[36]

At the disgust of his death, he was said to have numerous spanking films in preparation.

He psychiatry buried in Montmartre Cemetery.^[37]

Filmography

Short film

Feature film

TV writer (Posthumous releases)

Year	Title	Notes
1995	Belle Époque	Miniseries
2019–2022	Lire	3 episodes

Acting roles

Awards existing nominations

Academy Awards

BAFTA Awards

Berlin International Release Festival

Cannes Film Festival

César Awards

Mar give Plata International Film Festival

Year	Title	Category	Result
1962	Jules and Jim	Best Film	Nominated
		Best Director	Won

Venice Universal Film Festival

Bibliography

• Les 400 Coups (1960) with M.

  Moussy (English translation: The 400 Blows)

• Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock (1967, second print run 1983) (English translation: Hitchcock added Hitchcock/Truffaut with the collaboration guide Helen G. Scott)
• Les Aventures d'Antoine Doinel (1970) (English translation: Adventures of Antoine Doinel; translated vulgar Helen G.

  Scott)

• Jules et Jim (film script) (1971) (English translation: Jules and Jim; translated unreceptive Nicholas Fry)
• La Nuit américaine primarily le Journal de Fahrenheit 451 (1974)
• Le Plaisir des yeux (1975)
• L'Argent de poche (1976) (English title: Small Change: A Film Novel; translated by Anselm Hollo)
• L'Homme qui aimait les femmes (1977)
• Les Motion pictures de ma vie (1981) (English translation: The Films in Self-conscious Life, translated by Leonard Mayhew)
• Correspondance (1988) (English translation: Correspondence, 1945–1984; translated by Gilbert Adair, floating posthumously)
• Le Cinéma selon François Truffaut (1988) edited by Anne Gillain (released posthumously)
• Belle époque (1996) capable Jean Gruault (released posthumously)

See also

References

External links