After making a strong impact with his first film "Les 400 Coups", a semi-autobiographical narrative shot in the neo-realist style of the emerging "Nouvelle Vague", the French film director Francois Truffaut went on to make 23 films in 26 years. This appraisal of his work provides a socio-political contextualization, and gives an overview of his films and film-making methods. It seeks to shed new light on key aspects of his work, such as sexual politics, the construction of masculinity, the exploitation of genre, and the tension throughout the films between the "absolute" and the "provisional".