Episode Details

Francois Truffaut was a juvenile delinquent, a school dropout, and a military deserter before he became the most important film critic in France. Then he picked up a camera and made The 400 Blows, a film so personal and so revolutionary that it launched the French New Wave and changed what cinema could be.

This episode traces Truffaut from his neglected childhood through his years as a provocative critic at Cahiers du Cinema and his transformation into one of the most beloved directors in film history.

• The 400 Blows was autobiographical, drawing directly from his neglected and delinquent childhood
• He helped launch the French New Wave movement that revolutionized world cinema
• He appeared as an actor in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• He directed twenty-five films before his death from a brain tumor at fifty-two