The casual movie-goer will best remember film auteur, François Truffaut (b. 1932), as the French scientist, Claude Lacombe, in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

After gaining a reputation as a passionate and ascerbic film critic, Truffaut's first feature-length film, The 400 Blows, was a surprise winner at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. From that time until his untimely death in 1984, Truffaut created a remarkable body of work which was drawn extensively from his personal experiences. He gave the world the gifts of Jules & Jim (1962), the Academy Award winning Day For Night (1974), the delightful Small Change (1976), the futuristic Fahrenheit 451 (1966--his only film made in English), the haunting The Story of Adele H. (1975)and the "Antoine Doinel" cycle. One of his last filsm, The Last Metro (1980), the story of an acting troupe working in Occupied Paris during WWII, was a popular and criticla success that garnered an astonishing 10 Cesars (the French equivalent of the Academy Awards). Loved and admired by many, condemed by those who envied his commercial success and the un-revolutionary "sweetness" at the heart of his films, all would nevertheless agree that he was a man consumed by his craft, a man for whom, to paraphrase the title of his collection of film criticism, films were his life.

Books About (and by) François Truffaut

Francois Truffaut and Friends: Modernism, Sexuality, and Film Adaptation, by Robert Stam. Rutgers, 2006.

Francois Truufaut at Work, by Carole Le Berre. Phaidon, 2005.

Cutting the Body: Representing Women in Beaudelaire's Poetry, Truffaut's Cinema & Freud's Psychoa, by Eliane Francoise. Univ. of MI, 2000.

Truffaut: A Biography, by Antoine de Baecque & Serge Toubiana. Knopf. 1999.

Francois Truffaut (French Film Directors), by Diana Holmes & Robert Ingram. Manchester Univ. Press, 1998.

Truffaut: Les Mille at Une Nuits Americaines, by Dominque Auzel. Henri Veyier, 1990.

Correspondance, 1945-1984, by François Truffaut. Noonday Press, 1989.

Truffaut By Truffaut. texts & documents complied by Dominique Rabourdin. Abrams, 1987.

Finally Truffaut: A Film-by-Film Guide to the Master Filmmaker's Legacy, by Don Allen. Beaufort, 1985.

François Truffaut: A Guide to References & Resources, by Eugene P. Walz. GK Hall, 1982.

The Films in My Life, by François Truffaut. Simon & Schuster, 1978.

The New Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, by James Monaco. 1976.

Truffaut, by Don Allen. Viking, 1974.

Three European Directors: Truffaut, Fellini, Buñuel, by James McKendree Wall. Eerdmans, 1973.

François Truffaut, by C. G. Crisp. Praeger, 1972.

Focus on 'Shoot the Piano Player,' by Leo Braudy. Prentice-Hall, 1972.

The Cinema of François Truffaut, by Graham Petrie. A. S. Barnes, 1970.

The New Wave, edited by Peter Graham. 1968.

Hitchcock, by François Truffaut. Touchstone, 1967.

Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear: Some Key Filmmakers of the Sixties, by John Russell Taylor. Hill& Wang, 1964.

Published Screenplays

The Last Metro. Rutgers University Press, 1985.

Small Change: A Film Novel. Grove, 1976.

The Story of Adele H. Grove Press. 1976.

Day For Night. Grove Press, 1975.

The Wild Child. Washington Square Press, 1973.

Four By Truffaut: The Adventures of Antoine Doinel. Simon & Schuster, 1971.

Miscellaneous

Stolen Portraits: A Retrospective. [VHS] Orion Home Video, 1993.

Created and maintained by: Lynne M. Kennedy.

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