François Truffaut (in Montmartre Cemetery) - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

Note : the only entry to the cemetery is at N48 53.123 E2 19.849.

In a film career lasting just over a quarter of a century, he fulfilled the functions of screenwriter, director, producer or actor in over twentyfive films.

Truffaut was born out of wedlock in 1930s Paris, where he was raised by his mother and his adoptive father, Roland Truffaut, both of whom were devout Catholics. He never met his biological father Roland Lévy, who was a Jewish dentist. Truffaut had a difficult childhood that resulted in rebellion against his parents in particular and authority in general. Truffaut reported that his film The 400 Blows (1959) was largely autobiographical. His love of films partly came from his elective father, the writer and critic André Bazin.

Truffaut came to filmmaking only after an early career as one of the most outspoken film critics in France, writing for Bazin's les Cahiers du cinéma (he became an editor of the review in 1953). The Cahiers at this time were intensely critical of post-war French cinema; they saw it as overtly literary at the time. As a result of the severity of his critiques, Truffaut was refused a press pass to the 1958 Cannes film festival. Along with his Cahiers colleagues, including Jean-Luc Godard and Éric Rohmer, Truffaut was enamoured with Hollywood filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks, then often dismissed as mere genre film makers. In his 1954 article, Truffaut expounded the politique des auteurs, or Auteur theory of cinema which championed the idea that movies should reflect the personal vision and preoccupations of the director.

On October 29, 1957, he married Madeleine Morgenstern at the City Hall in Paris, with whom he had two children, Laura (b. January 22, 1959) and Eva (b. June 29, 1961). His father-in-law, a film producer and distributor, helped to get Truffaut's career off the ground, by financing the making of his first film, the short Les Mistons (1958). He and Morgenstern divorced in 1965. In 1983, he had a daughter with actress and constant companion, Fanny Ardant, Joséphine Truffaut who was born on September 28, 1983, a year before his death.

The dynamics of relationships are a common thread throughout most of his films.

Truffaut was an expert on Sir Alfred Hitchcock, even publishing a book Hitchcock (1962, also known as Hitchcock/Truffaut) which recorded interviews and conversations with Hitchcock. His last film Confidentially Yours, a comedy thriller in black and white, could be considered to be a "fake Hitchcock".

Truffaut's 1973 production of La Nuit américaine (known in the US as Day for Night) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Also an actor, he sometimes played in his own films, and appeared in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Truffaut suffered from a brain tumour which was diagnosed in 1983. He died shortly thereafter in the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine at the age of 52. He was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris.

Among Truffaut's films one can discern a series featuring the character Antoine Doinel, played by the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud who began his career in The 400 Blows at the age of fourteen, continuing as the favourite actor and "double" of Truffaut himself. The series would continue with Antoine and Colette (a short film in the anthology Love at Twenty), Stolen Kisses, Bed & Board and finally Love on the Run

In most of these movies, Léaud's partner is Truffaut's favourite actress Claude Jade as his girlfriend (and then wife), "Christine Darbon".

A keen reader, Truffaut filmed many novels:

American detective novels
The Bride Wore Black by William Irish
Mississippi Mermaid by William Irish
The Long Saturday Night (filmed as Confidentially Yours) by Charles Williams
Shoot the Piano Player by David Goodis
Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me by Henry Farrell
Novels by Henri-Pierre Roché
Jules et Jim
Two English Girls
Henry James' short story "The Altar of the Dead", filmed as The Green Room, considered by some to be his deepest and most serious film
Ray Bradbury's science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451
Truffaut's other films result from original screenplays, often co-written by the screenwriters Suzanne Schiffman or Jean Gruault, films on very diverse subjects, the sombre The Story of Adele H., inspired by the life of the daughter of Victor Hugo, with Isabelle Adjani, or La Nuit américaine, shot at the Studio La Victorine describing the ups and downs of film-making, or The Last Metro, set during the German occupation of France, a film rewarded by ten César Awards.

Description: See above. Date of birth: 02/06/1932 Date of death: 10/21/1984 Area of notoriety: Entertainment Marker Type: Horizontal Marker Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: 09:00 - 17:30 Fee required?: No Web site: Not listed

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