Francois Truffaut's 15 Greatest Films

Any day bringing a new Francois Truffaut film to the Criterion Collection is a good one, so it follows that today is a good day. Though every cinephile’s favorite label already includes a smattering from the French New Wave legend, most notably “Jules Et Jim” and the Antoine Doinel series, today sees the release of a new edition of “The Soft Skin,” an early, often-undervalued film by the filmmaker. So even though we ran an Essentials feature last year to celebrate the Blu-Ray re-release of "Jules et Jim," we tend to jump at any chance to write about Truffaut. We've expanded that feature herein to 15 titles, listed chronologically (yes, we are shaping up for a full retrospective at some point).

Truffaut went from runaway schoolboy to bad-boy Cahiers du Cinema critic to wildly acclaimed filmmaker before the age of 27, and passed away of a brain tumor aged only 52 —consequently, his career can sometimes seem brief if brilliant one. Truffaut packed a lot into his...