Fran??ois Truffaut

One of the founders of the French New Wave is Francois Roland Truffaut born on February 6, 1932. With a film career that lasted over 25 years he work on over 25 films and is known as a film director, screenwriter, actor, film critic and producer. Truffaut loved Henri Langlois' Cinematheque Francaise where he watched countless foreign films and became familiar with acting and directing though the films of John Ford, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock.
In 1948 Truffaut started his own film club and collaborated with Andre Bazin who helped him out of criminal and financial situations. He was charged as a deserter when he tried to escape the French Army. In 1950 his friend Bazin gave Truffaut the job of art critic and Truffaut was unforgiving. He was named The Gravedigger of French Cinema and was not invited to the Cannes Film Festival in 1958.
In 1955 he directed the film Une Visite and then Les Mistons in 1957. His feature film in 1959 was Les Quatre Cents Coups based on Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. His film won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Truffaut is one of the stars in Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977.
Truffaut married madeleine Morgenstern in 1957 and they divorced in 1965. They had two daughters. Truffaut was known to have had affairs with most of his leading ladies. He lived with actress Fanny Ardant from 1981 to 1984 and they had a daughter.
Truffaut was composing Rive droite, rive gauche when he had a stroke. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died on October 21, 1984 at the age of 52.