François Truffaut
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François Roland Truffaut (French IPA: [fʁɑ̃swa tʁyˈfo]; February 6, 1932 – October 21, 1984) was one of the founders of the French New Wave in filmmaking, and remains an icon of the French film industry. In a film career lasting just over a quarter of a century, he was screenwriter, director, producer or actor in over twenty-five films.
LifeFrançois Truffaut was born on February 6, 1932, out of wedlock. He never met his biological father, who was a dentist. His mother's future husband Roland Truffaut accepted him as an adopted son and gave him his surname. He was passed around to live with various nannies and his grandmother for a number of years. It was his grandmother that instilled him with her love of books and music. He lived with his grandmother until her death when Truffaut was ten years old. It was only after his grandmother's death that he lived with his parents for the first time. He would often stay with friends and try to be out of the house as much as possible. It was the cinema that offered him the greatest escape from an unsatisfying home life. He was eight years old when he saw his first movie, Abel Gance's Paradis perdu from 1939. It was there that his obsession began. He frequently played truant from school and would sneak into theaters because he didn't have enough money for admission. After being excluded from several schools, at the age of fourteen he decided to be self taught. Some of his academic "goals" were to watch three movies a day and read three books a week. Truffaut frequented Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque Française where he was exposed to countless foreign films from around the world. It was here that he fell in love with U.S. cinema and such directors as John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Alfred Hitchcock. After starting his own film club in 1948, Truffaut met André Bazin, who would have great impact on his professional and personal life. Bazin was a critic and the head of another film society at the time. He became a personal friend of Truffaut's and helped him out of various financial and criminal situations during his formative years. Truffaut joined the French Army in 1950, but spent the next two years trying to escape. Truffaut was arrested for attempting to desert the army. Bazin used his various political contacts to get Truffaut released and set him up with a job at his newly formed film magazine Cahiers du cinema. He soon became a film critic, and later a film director. He directed many movies. Over the next few years, Truffaut became a critic (and later editor) at Cahiers. He was notorious for being brutal and unforgiving in his reviews, especially his take on French cinema of the day. He was called "The Gravedigger of French Cinema" and was even banned from the Cannes Film Festival in 1958. He developed one of the most influential theories of cinema itself, the auteur theory. In 1954 Truffaut wrote an article called "Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français" (A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema), in which he stated that the director was the "author" of his work; that great directors such as Renoir, or Hitchcock, have distinct styles and themes that permeate all of their films. Although his theory was not widely accepted then, it gained some support in the 1960s from American critic Andrew Sarris. After having been a critic, Truffaut decided to make films of his own. He started out with the short film Une Visite in 1955 and followed that up with Les Mistons in 1957. After seeing Orson Welles' Touch of Evil at the Expo 58, he was inspired to make his feature film debut The 400 Blows. In 1983 François Truffaut was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He died on October 21, 1984. At the time of his death, he still had numerous films in preparation. His goal was to make thirty films and then retire to write books for his remaining days. He was five films short of his personal goal. He is buried in Montmartre Cemetery. WorkThe 400 Blows was released in 1959 to much critical and commercial acclaim. Truffaut received a Best Director award from the Cannes Film Festival, the same festival that had banned him only one year earlier. The film follows the character of Antoine Doinel through his perilous misadventures in school, an unhappy home life and later military school. The film is highly autobiographical. Both Truffaut and Doinel were only children of loveless marriages; they both committed petty crimes of theft and truancy from the military. Truffaut cast Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel. Léaud was an unknown who auditioned for the role after seeing a flyer. Léaud and Truffaut collaborated on several films over the years. Their most noteworthy collaboration was the continuation of the Antoine Doinel character in a series of films called "The Antoine Doinel Cycle". The 400 Blows marked the beginning of the French New Wave Movement, which gave directors such as Godard and Rivette a wider audience. The New Wave dealt with a self-conscious rejection of traditional cinema structure. This was a topic on which Truffaut had been writing for years. Following the success of The 400 Blows, Truffaut featured disjunctive editing and seemingly random voice-overs in his next film Shoot the Piano Player (1960). Truffaut has stated that in the middle of filming, he realized that he hated gangsters. But since gangsters were a main part of the story, he toned up the comical aspect of the characters and made the movie more attuned to his liking. Even though Shoot the Piano Player was much appreciated by critics, it performed poorly at the box office. While the film focused on two of the French New Wave’s favorite elements, American Film Noir and themselves, Truffaut never again experimented as heavily. In 1962 Truffaut directed what some would call his masterpiece, although it was only his third movie. Jules and Jim is the story of a woman who falls in love with two friends and begins a love triangle that lasts for many years. It is almost a fairy tale in which anything is possible. In the film, you believe a woman can love two men equally. You easily believe that she is so beautiful that the two men would be willing to do anything for her. If Shoot The Piano Player is a prime example of the French New Wave Gangster B-Movie, then Jules and Jim surely is an example of youthful free-spirited love that is found throughout New Wave Cinema.[original research?] Jules and Jim has influenced many directors of current cinema. Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky makes visual references to it, but the plot has a different take, with two male friends who fall in love with the same woman. Both films feature unstable women who drive their lovers off a bridge Over the next decade Truffaut had varying degrees of success with his films. In 1965 he directed the American production of Ray Bradbury’s classic sci-fi novel Fahrenheit 451. It showcased Truffaut’s love of books. His only English-speaking film was a great challenge for Truffaut, because he barely spoke English himself. This was also his first film shot in color. The larger scale production was difficult for Truffaut, who had worked only with small crews and budgets. Truffaut worked on projects with varied subjects. The Bride Wore Black (1968) is a brutal tale of revenge, Mississippi Mermaid (1969) is an identity-bending romantic thriller, Stolen Kisses (1968) and Bed and Board (1970) are continuations of the Antoine Doinel Cycle, and The Wild Child (1970) included Truffaut’s first acting in a film. Two English Girls (1971) is the yin to the Jules and Jim yang. It is based on a story written by Henri-Pierre Roche, who also wrote Jules and Jim. It is about a man who falls equally in love with two sisters, and their love affair over a period of years. Day for Night won Truffaut an Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1973. The film is probably his most reflective work. It is the story of a film crew trying to finish their film while dealing with all of the personal and professional problems that accompany making a movie. Truffaut plays the director of the fictional film being made. This film features scenes shown in his previous films. It is considered to be his best film since his earliest work. Time magazine placed it on their list of 100 Best Films of the Century (along with The 400 Blows). In 1975, Truffaut gained more notoriety with The Story of Adele H. Isabelle Adjani in the title role earned a nomination for an Best Actress Oscar. Truffaut's 1976 film Small Change gained a Golden Globe Nomination for Best Foreign Film. One of his final films gave Truffaut an international revival. In 1980, his film The Last Metro garnered twelve Cesar Award nominations with ten wins, including Best Director. Truffaut’s final movie was shot in black and white. It gives his career almost a sense of having bookends. In 1983 Confidentially Yours is Truffaut’s tribute to his favorite director, Alfred Hitchcock. It deals with numerous Hitchcockian themes, such as private guilt vs. public innocence, a woman investigating a murder, anonymous locations, etc. Among Truffaut's films, a series features the character Antoine Doinel, played by the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. He began his career in The 400 Blows at the age of fourteen, and continued as the favorite actor and "double" of Truffaut. The series continued with Antoine and Colette (a short film in the anthology Love at Twenty), Stolen Kisses (in which he falls in love with Christine Darbon alias Claude Jade), Bed and Board about the married couple Antoine and Christine - and finally Love on the Run, where the couple going divorces. In the last movies, Léaud's partner was played by Truffaut's favourite actress Claude Jade as his girlfriend (and then wife), "Christine Darbon". A keen reader, Truffaut adapted many literary works:
Truffaut's other films were from original screenplays, often co-written by the screenwriters Suzanne Schiffman or Jean Gruault. They featured diverse subjects, the sombre The Story of Adele H., inspired by the life of the daughter of Victor Hugo, with Isabelle Adjani; Day for Night, shot at the Studio La Victorine describing the ups and downs of film-making; and The Last Metro, set during the German occupation of France, a film rewarded by ten César Awards. FilmographyDirector
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