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François Truffaut |
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Director / Screenwriter /
Producer / Actor |
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1932 - 1984 |
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Born February 6,
Paris, France |
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Key
Production Country: France |
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Key Genres:
Drama, Romantic Drama, Comedy Drama, Period Film, Romance, Psychological Drama, Childhood Drama,
Coming-of-Age, Melodrama,
Post-Noir (Modern Noir),
Romantic Comedy |
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Key
Collaborators:
Marcel Berbert (Producer), Nestor Almendros (Cinematographer), Georges
Delerue (Composer), Suzanne Schiffman (Screenwriter), Martine Barraque
(Editor), Jean-Pierre Kohut (Production Designer), Jean-Pierre Leaud (Leading Player), Jean Gruault (Screenwriter), Jean-Louis Richard (Screenwriter/Character
Player), Raoul Coutard (Cinematographer) |
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Highly Recommended: The 400 Blows (1959)*, Shoot the Piano Player (1960)*,
Jules et Jim (1961)*, The Soft Skin (1964), Stolen Kisses (1968), Day for Night (1973)* |
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Recommended: The Bride Wore Black (1967), The Wild Child
(1970)*, Bed & Board (1970), Two
English Girls (1971), The Woman Next Door (1981)*, Confidentially Yours (1983) |
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Worth a Look: Les
Mistons (1957), Love at Twenty (1962) [co-directed by Shintaro Ishihara,
Marcel Ophüls,
Renzo Rossellini &
Andrzej Wajda], Fahrenheit 451 (1967), Mississippi Mermaid
(1969), The Story of Adele H (1975), Small Change (1976),
The Man Who Loved Women (1977), The Green Room
(1978), Love on the Run (1978), The Last Metro (1980) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ]
[
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ]
[
Film Reference ]
[
Strictly
Film School ] [
Baseline
Biography ] [
Wikipedia ] [
1970
Interview ] [
WSWS
Article (1999) ] [
Films de France
Biography ] [
Francois Truffaut.com ] [
Salon Article (1999) ] [
kamera
Article ] [
The Criterion Collection ]
[
New Cinema Magazine
] |
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Books: [
The
Films in My Life ] [
Truffaut: A Biography ]
[
Francois Truffaut: Interviews
] [
Francois Truffaut: Film Author 1932-1984
] [
François
Truffaut: Correspondence 1945-1984 ] [
The
Early Film Criticism of François Truffaut ] [
François
Truffaut: The Complete Films ] [
François
Truffaut ] [
François
Truffaut (French Film Directors) ] [
Francois Truffaut at Work ] [
Francois Truffaut and Friends: Modernism, Sexuality, and Film Adaptation
] |
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"François
Truffaut was one of five young French film critics, writing for
André Bazin's Cahiers du Cinema in the early 1950s, who
became the leading French filmmakers of their generation...Unlike
his friend and contemporary,
Jean-Luc
Godard, Truffaut remained consistently committed to his highly
formal themes of art and life, film and fiction, youth and
education, art and education, rather than venturing into radical
political critiques of film forms and film imagery." -
Gerald
Mast (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991) |
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"A
passionately romantic humanist like
Renoir,
Truffaut was also a devout admirer of the skills of
Hitchcock,
which he attempted to emulate in several of his own thrillers. He
published a book of a series of interviews he conducted with
Hitchcock,
whom he repeatedly identified as his idol, but temperamentally and
emotionally his affinity with
Renoir
seemed to be the stronger side of his split artistic personality" -
(The
MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994) |
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"In
his lesser films, he tended to rely too flagrantly on sentimental
charm, melodramatic contrivance and romantic whimsy, and an
insistent fascination with the mystery of women...His finest work,
however, is precariously but deftly balanced between sympathetic
involvement with his characters' doubts, frustration and
confusion, and gently ironic detachment; accordingly, he favoured
the medium close-up and medium-shot, linear but subtly elliptical
narratives and, occasionally, voiceover narration, literary in
tone." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"A
seminal director in the French New Wave, Truffaut is a master at
illustrating the small joys and sorrows of human existence, with
a particular talent for understanding children." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"The film of
tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but
by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and
thrilling adventure." -
François Truffaut |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include A Gorgeous Girl Like Me (1973). |
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