Editing François Truffaut (section)

===''Cahiers du Cinéma''===
Over the next few years, Truffaut became a critic (and later editor) at ''Cahiers'', where he became notorious for his brutal, unforgiving reviews. He was called "The Gravedigger of French Cinema"<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2009/04/quatre-cents-truffaut-cinema |title=Film as an act of love|author = Sukhdev Sandhu |magazine= [[New Statesman]] |date=2 April 2009}}</ref> and was the only French critic not invited to the 1958 [[Cannes Film Festival]]. He supported Bazin in developing one of the most influential theories of cinema, the [[auteur theory]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/art/auteur-theory|title=Auteur theory Filmmaking |author = ((The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica))|encyclopedia= Encyclopedia Britannica |date=20 July 1998}}</ref>

In 1954, Truffaut wrote an article in ''Cahiers du cinéma'', "Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français" ("A Certain Trend of French Cinema"),<ref name="AllMovie" /> in which he attacked the state of French films, lambasting certain screenwriters and producers, and listing eight directors he considered incapable of devising the kinds of "vile" and "grotesque" characters and storylines he called characteristic of the mainstream French film industry: [[Jean Renoir]], [[Robert Bresson]], [[Jean Cocteau]], [[Jacques Becker]], [[Abel Gance]], [[Max Ophuls]], [[Jacques Tati]] and [[Roger Leenhardt]]. The article caused a storm of controversy and landed Truffaut an offer to write for the nationally circulated, more widely read cultural weekly ''Arts-Lettres-Spectacles''. Truffaut wrote more than 500 film articles for that publication over the next four years.

Truffaut later devised the [[auteur theory]], according to which the director was the "author" of his work and great directors such as Renoir or Hitchcock have distinct styles and themes that permeate their films. Although his theory was not widely accepted then, it gained some support in the 1960s from American critic [[Andrew Sarris]]. In 1966, Truffaut published his book-length interview with Hitchcock, ''[[Hitchcock/Truffaut]]''.