Influential film critic, leading New Wave director and heir to the humanistic cinematic tradition of Jean Renoir, François Truffaut made films that reflected his three professed passions: a love of cinema, an interest in male-female relationships and a fascination with children.

Always concerned with the process as well as the product of his profession, Truffaut maintained his role as critic and commentator throughout his filmmaking career, as proud of his books as he was of his films. Among his publications is a book-length interview with Hitchcock, Hitchcock-Truffaut (1967), a perennial critical classic which he revised in 1983, shortly before his death. His critical essays were collected in Les Films de ma Vie (1975) and his letters—posthumously—in François Truffaut Correspondance (1990), with a foreword by Jean-Luc Godard.