Here at Only Kent we’re always interested to see a new Google Doodle and today on the Google homepage you can see the latest Google Doodle in commendation of Francois Truffaut, the French filmmaker. Today would have been Truffaut’s 80th birthday and the Google Doodle celebrates Truffaut’s contribution to avant-garde cinema.

If you haven’t yet come across Google Doodle’s, they appear from time-to-time and usually mark an occasion or historic event and sometimes commemorate a person. Some of the most recent examples have been for the Addams Family creator Charles Addams and one noting the largest snowflake recorded. Today’s Google Doodle has a slideshow of three different stylized pictures, the first of which shows a man gazing out at the sea and reflects one of Truffaut’s best-known films, ‘The 400 Blows,’ from 1959. Truffaut won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for this film. The figure of the man replaces the middle ‘G’ in the spelling out of Google.

Truffaut directed over 25 feature and short films, produced screenplays, became a film critic and also an actor. He is known as a founder of the French New Wave style that arose in the 1950s and one of the highlights of his career was winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1973 for ‘Day for Night.’ He also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ made in 1977, as scientist Claude Lacombe.

The much-acclaimed filmmaker died on October 21, 1984 aged only 52 from a brain tumor. We’d like to hear your thoughts on today’s Google Doodle and of course Francois Truffaut himself. Do you think the Google Doodle is a fitting tribute? Who would you like to see commemorated next? Let us have your comments on this.

Sources: Slash Gear AND Metro

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