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Claude Sautet

Sautet is one of France's leading chroniclers of middle-class, and especially middle-aged, life. He began his career as an assistant (e.g., to Jacques Becker on the classic gangster yarn, "Touchez pas au Grisbi" 1954), served as a TV producer and earned a reputation as a superior scenarist before directing his first feature, "Bonjour sourire," in 1955. His first significant achievement, the craftily handled underworld melodrama "The Big Risk" (1959), was overshadowed by the activities of the younger, New Wave directors. Sautet came into his own, however, with "The Things of Life" (1970), a keenly observed study of a mid-life crisis triggered by an automobile accident, which won the Prix Delluc at Cannes. Like many of the director's subsequent films, it starred Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli.