François Truffaut is an excellent director and actor, one of the brightest representatives of the "new wave" in French cinema. Truffaut's work is distinguished by the relative simplicity of plots, subtle lyricism and brilliant mastery of cinema techniques. In total, Truffaut has shot more than twenty films in his life.
Truffaut's childhood and acquaintance with Bazin
François Truffaut, who appeared in February 1932, was an illegitimate child. His mother, the secretary of the newspaper "Ilustration" Jeanine de Montferrand, kept the name of his biological father a secret for a long time. Only as an adult did François learn that his name was Roland Levy and he was a dentist from Bayonne (a city in southwestern France).
In the spring of 1934, she Jeanine de Montferrand married an employee of the architectural bureau Roland Truffaut, he adopted her son and gave him his last name.
François didn't like studying at school. He often skipped classes and misbehaved, for which he was repeatedly expelled. At the age of fourteen, he decided to permanently quit his studies and organized a club of film fans with friends, which allowed him to meet the famous film critic André Bazin. He managed to see real talent in young François and gave him a job in his film magazine Cahiers du Cinema.
When the young man was eighteen, they tried to take him into the army. But François had a negative attitude towards military service, and therefore fled directly from the recruiting station. The guy could have been imprisoned for desertion, but André Bazin was able to hush up this incident and, as a result, Truffaut was simply discharged.
The first steps and first successes of Truffaut as a director
At the age of twenty-two, François wrote his first script and shot the short film "Visit" based on it. However, this project did not arouse much interest among viewers and critics.
François realized that he lacked practical skills, and therefore got a job as an assistant to the venerable Italian director Roberto Rossellini. In 1957 Truffaut directed his second short film, Chantrap. It was received by critics much better than The Visit.
And back in 1957, Truffaut tied himself in marriage. He married Madeleine Morgenstern, the daughter of an influential film distributor. The couple lived together for eight years, during which Madeleine gave birth to two daughters François. Truffaut never married again, but there were plenty of romances with different women (most often actresses) in his life.
In 1958, Truffaut, together with his friend Jean-Luc Godard, created an eighteen-minute film "The History of Water", in which some innovative moves and techniques were tested for their time.
A year later, in 1959, Truffaut filmed (already without anyone's help) the film Four Hundred Blows. It may well be called autobiographical; it shows much of what Truffaut himself experienced in his youth. And the main character Antoine Doinel can be called the second “I” of the director. This work brought Truffaut the Cannes Film Festival prize, an Oscar nomination and worldwide fame. Today "Four Hundred Blows" is considered almost the first film of the "French New Wave" - the most important direction in European cinema of the sixties.
Truffaut's work after 1959
Then Truffaut made several more interesting black and white films - "Shoot the Pianist", "Jules and Jim", "Tender Skin". A big event in the world of cinema was Truffaut's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's famous dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1966). This was the first work of a French master, filmed on color film.
In 1968 Truffaut's Stolen Kisses appeared in theaters. Here, as in the film "Four Hundred Blows", the main character is Antoine Doinel (but, of course, matured). Truffaut created a whole series of films, united by one character. This cycle also includes the films "Family Hearth" and "Runaway Love".
An important milestone in Truffaut's career as a director is American Night (1973). The name in this case refers to a well-known cinematic technique that allows you to shoot night scenes during the day. This film shows heroes who are passionately in love with cinema and are ready to make any sacrifices for it. "American Night" was well received not only in France, but also in the States - Truffaut received an Oscar for it.
It is worth noting that sometimes Francois took part in the projects of other directors just as an actor. For example, in 1977 he played the role of professor in Spielberg's fantastic film "Close Encounters of the Third Degree".
Latest Truffaut films and an affair with Fanny Ardant
François Truffaut's most successful film at the French box office is The Last Metro (1980). Here the director shows the audience one of the theaters in Paris during the Nazi occupation. All the heroes are theater workers who, in a terrible and difficult time for France, reveal themselves from an unexpected side. Among the actors who starred in the film are Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu.
Truffaut invited the young Depardieu to his next picture - "The Neighbor". The charming Fanny Ardant became Depardieu's partner in this film. During the filming, love broke out between Fanny and the venerable director. In the last years of Truffaut's life, it was Ardant who was his faithful companion. The actress even gave birth to a child from François, although their relationship was never formalized. And in the last movie Truffaut - in the detective "Hurry Sunday!" - it was Fanny Ardant who played the main role.
In 1984, fifty-two-year-old François Truffaut was unexpectedly diagnosed with brain cancer, and in October of the same year he died of this terrible disease. He was buried in the Montmartre cemetery.
