François Truffaut

ilm critic and director, born in Paris, France. His first career, as a critic from 1953, led to his auteur (..author..) concept of film-making. In 1959 he made his first feature as director/actor/co-scriptwriter, Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows), an autobiographical study of a troubled adolescent, effectively launching the French Nouvelle Vague (..New Wave..) movement. This was followed by Tirez sur le pianiste (1960, Shoot the Pianist), Jules et Jim (1962), and Fahrenheit 451 (1966), in all of which he was also co-scriptwriter. Several of his films contain autobiographical elements, relating to an unhappy childhood and turbulent youth. He continued actively at work throughout the 1970s, notably with La Nuit américaine (1972, trans Day for Night), for which he received an Oscar, and Le Dernier Métro (1980, The Last Metro), which was a major commercial success. He acted in several of his films, and also in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He returned from colour photography to his first love of black-and-white in his final film, Vivement Dimanche (1983, Lively Sunday), a tongue-in-cheek evocation of the work of one of his idols - Hitchcock. .. ..