Prolific French film director Claude Chabrol has died at age 80.
The filmmaker's death was announced this morning by Christophe Girard, the deputy mayor of Paris.
He praised the "colossal French director", adding that he was "free-minded, impertinent, political and loquacious".
One-time critic Chabrol was a co-founder of the French New Wave movement, alongside contemporaries including Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer. He went on to become famous for his pyschological thrillers, including The Unfaithful Wife, This Man Must Die and his final film Bellamy. With an inventive wit and a sometime macabre sense of humour, he created films that combined high art with a great sense of immediacy and energy, never slackening their grip on the audience.
In a career which began in 1958 with La Beau Serge, Chabrol made more than 80 films for TV and cinema. He also contributed to some of the most famous films in the New Wave canon, including the seminal Breathless.
He is survived by his third wife, script supervisor Aurore Pajot, and his four children.
