Andre Bazin

Francois Truffaut was one of the principal figures in the French New Wave movement of the 1950s and early 1960s. As a young critic for the avant-garde film magazine Les Cahiers du Cinema, he formulated the politique des auteurs---the idea that directors with a personal vision are the true authors of films, rather than conventional screenwriters or script-bound directors. An admirer of American films, Truffaut was much influenced by Alfred Hitchcock (see Vol. 1). In several of his own films, Truffaut, who had an unhappy childhood and youth, portrayed a fictionalized version of himself, a character called Antoine Doinel, to create personal cinema. The first of these films, which was also his first feature film, was The Four Hundred Blows (1959). It is still one of the most popular of his works. Other notable Truffaut films are Shoot the Piano Player (1960), the lyrical menage a trois Jules and Jim (1961), the Academy Award-winning Day for Night (1973), The Last Metro (1980), and The Woman Next Door (1981). 020