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Philadelphia Daily News (16/Sep/1982) - French film director Francois Truffaut

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French film director Francois Truffaut

OBITUARY

The thin, dark-haired director was credited with taking French cinema from the glittery Hollywood style of the 1950s to stark, realistic portrayals of the lives of ordinary people.

He is probably best known to American viewers as the French professor in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Among his 25 films were the major works The 400 blows in 1959, Jules and Jim (1961), Farenheit 451 (1966), The Story of Adele H (1975) and The Last Metro in 1980. He made his last film, Vivement Dimanche, in 1983.

Day for Night — his affectionate tribute to the Hollywood movie industry, won Truffaut the Academy Award in 1973 for best foreign film.

Rohmer, a protege of the director said Truffaut's work had not been properly respected in France despite universal recognition abroad.

"This is one of our most personal and original directors," said Rohmer. "French critics were not fair with him. Abroad and particularly in the United States, Truffaut was considered as the most important cinema director in France and even — along with (Frederico) Fellini and (Ingmar) Bergman — in the world."

Truffaut died the same weekend as another French director Pierre Kast and the poet and artist Henri Michaux.

Truffaut's lead was quickly followed by directors such as Rohmer and Jean-Luc Goddard.

Truffaut began his career as a film critic with Cahiers du Cinema magazine and was barred from the 1958 Cannes Film Festival because of his scathing attacks on films of the day.

The turning point in his career came shortly after his 1957 marriage to Madeleine Morgenstern, daughter of French director Ignace Morgenstern, one of the chief targets of his bitter film reviews.

Ignace Morgenstern helped finance Truffaut's first movie, reportedly in the hope that the young critic would humiliate himself.

Truffaut made The 400 Blows for a reported $60,000, gained instant fame and won the best director award at Cannes a year after being barred.

Like his idol, American director Alfred Hitchcock, Truffaut would sometimes cast himself in bit parts in his films, such as The Green Room, The American Night and Wild Child.

French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, in a telegram of condolence to Truffaut's wife, Fanny Ardant, said the director "planted his genius on French cinema for 25 years and made a huge contribution to its rebirth and international influence."

Truffaut had two daughters, Laura and Eva, from his marriage to Madeleine and a third child, Josephine, from his 1983 marriage to Ardant.

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