--- Francois Truffaut, in Arts magazine, May 1957

Francois Truffaut, (February 6, 1932-October 21, 1984) one of the founders of the French New Wave in filmmaking, remains an icon of the French film industry. In a film career spanning just over a quarter of a century, he wore the mantle of screenwriter, director, producer and actor in over 25 films.

Truffaut's films reflected his three professed passions: love of cinema, interest in male-female relationships and fascination with children. He embarked on filmdom with shorts (Une Visite, 1954 and Les Mistons, 1957) and as assistant to the famous Robert Rossellini. In 1959 he completed his first feature film, a semi-autobiographical childhood story The Four Hundred Blows about a troubled adolescent named Antoine Doinel. This film was to be a precursor to others, which captured Dionel's youth and young adulthood -- the Antoine and Colette episode of Love at Twenty (1962), Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970) and Love on the Run (1979). The common thread in the films was actor Jean-Pierre Leaud who played the part of Antoine. The Four Hundred Blows bagged Truffaut the honour of Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959.

From the early 1960s, Truffaut's work was distinguished by two diverging strains: On the one hand he celebrated life in the humanistic tradition of Jean Renoir. In this rank are Jules and Jim (1961), a bitter sweet story not of the two men but of Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), the woman who dominates their lives, The Wild Child (1970) in which Truffaut starred as the historical Dr Jean Itard. Others followed, including Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1973), Day for Night (1973), Small Change (1976), The Man Who Loved Women (1977) and the mellow thriller Confidentially Yours (1983). Day for Night won an Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film.

At the other end of the spectrum are fatalistic films imbued with a Hitchcockian fascination with life's darker side: The Bride Wore Black (1968), his explicit homage to Hitchcock; Two English Girls (1972) about a writer and his affairs with two sisters; The Story of Adele H (1975), a harrowing tale of unrequited love and The Last Metro (1980).

Truffaut also chose other creative paths. In 1976 he accepted an invitation from acclaimed American filmmaker Steven Spielberg to star in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His role was that of a scientist in search of communication with extra-terrestrials.

Truffaut also had several publications to his credit: A book-length interview with Hitchcock, titled Hitchcock-Truffaut (1967) and critical essays collected in Les Films de ma Vie ( 1975), apart from his letters published posthumously in Francois Truffaut Correspondance (1990) with a foreword by Jean-Luc Godard.

Truffaut's life was nipped by a brain tumour. However his legacy lives on and continues to inspire a whole new generation of filmmakers all over the world.

Compiled by Cultural Correspondent