Suzanne Schiffman

Award-winning French film-maker who began her career as a New Wave script girl
  • The Guardian,
Suzanne Schiffman, who has died of cancer in Paris aged 71, occupied a special niche within the French cinema industry. Her death comes some 17 years after that of her mentor and close friend, François Truffaut. The young Suzanne studied art history at the Sorbonne and, as a student, she made friends with a group of young film-makers and cinéastes whose work is now celebrated as the New Wave. This small group met at ciné-clubs and the Cinémathèque (which closely resembles London's National Film Theatre) where they learned their craft, trained by watching hundreds of classic films.

Having completed her studies, Schiffman travelled to the US and Mexico and then returned to work with her colleagues and friends, most notably Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Truffaut, whom she had met in 1949. With these young film-makers she carved a distinct identity for herself, occupying in turns many different positions. The French film industry was less constrained and more flexible than its British counterpart, whose strong union required members to constrict themselves to a particular skill. Schiffman was in turn script girl (continuity), assistant director, casting director and, most notably, screen writer. She even acted as "stand-in" for Truffaut, since they were the same height; there was not much on the film set that she could not turn her hand to.

Her first job as script girl with Rivette was Paris Nous Appartient (1958), followed by Tirez Sur le Pianiste (1960) with Truffaut, then Godard's Une Femme est une Femme (1960). She worked with these three film-makers on some 30 films which provided the hard core of prize-list and film festival material over some 25 years.

There were four films with Godard, including Le Mépris (1963) with Brigitte Bardot, Le Petit Soldat (1963) and Pierrot le Fou (1965), seven with Rivette, and 20 with Truffaut, until his last production, Vivement Dimanche! (1983).

Notwithstanding her prior artistic contribution at the development stage of a script, Truffaut finally acknowledged her as co-script writer on La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night), which won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1974 and a personal Oscar nomination for Schiffman for best screenplay. She then proceeded to co-write seven major screen plays with Truffaut, while continuing as artistic collaborator from first conception to the final cut of each production.

Truffaut openly acknowledged that he drew heavily on personal experience for artistic inspiration, but Schiffman was a much more private and reticent artist. However, it is believed that her childhood war experience was in part inspiration for the script for which she won a César (the French equivalent of the Oscar), Le Dernier Métro (1980, Truffaut's final critical triumph), which tells the story of a French theatre company which keeps performing throughout the war while their Jewish director is kept hidden under the floor of the stage.

When Schiffman's Jewish-born mother was detained by the French Gestapo in Paris and then sent to a special camp near Beaune, her children went into hiding from the Nazi regime with an order of nuns. Meanwhile, Schiffman's father had formed a relationship with a woman of whom his children had become very fond. This caused consternation for the young family. They wanted their mother to return, but were apprehensive as to how this might affect their loyalty to their father's new friend. However, it later emerged that Schiffman's mother had died in a German concentration camp. These sentiments are echoed in the storyline of Le Dernier Métro, where the leading lady falls in love with her co-actor, while her husband, the director, is in hiding.

Schiffman was an indispensable stimulus and an inspirer, who supported her directors through their most difficult moments. After Truffaut's early death, she came to direct her own films, most notably The Sorcerer (1987), an ambitious fable set in the Middle Ages which still enjoys film club showings. More recently she worked with Emergence - a government-backed programme which nurtures and educates student film-makers, providing them with funding, guidance and professional crews.

She was a loyal wife (her husband, who died two years ago, was the American painter, Philip Schiffman), steadfast friend, proud mother of two sons (Matthieu, a cine-photographer, and Guillaume, an assistant director) and five grandchildren; away from the world of film production, she loved to cook for her friends and spend time with her family near Montoux in Provence.

Kika Markham writes: I first met Suzanne when she interviewed me with Truffaut for Les Deux Anglaises. I was wearing a black jumper and skirt, the only matching things I had, and my way of trying to look elegant. "We didn't know why you chose to dress up as a waitress - you gave us a rather odd impression," she told me years later.

It was difficult not to be in awe of Suzanne. She saw life through an acute lens, whether on a cinema screen or at a market fruit stall at her beloved Vaison-La-Romaine. I would choose a melon. She would pluck it from me, sniff it, and put it straight back with a contemptuous shrug.

Suzanne could do a Gallic shrug in a thousand and one ways. Private and elusive, she could also be caustic and mocking. One had to be so brave to approach her during those times. But get her on her two main passions - the cinema and her grandchildren - her eyes shone, her voice softened, she was beautiful.

Her funeral was at Père Lachaise cemetery. Inside the chapel we heard Georges Delerue's music from Truffaut's films. As the coffin came into view, the sound of Jeanne Moreau's voice rang out, singing the song from Jules et Jim. There were directors, writers, actors, relatives, local people and, of course, her children and grandchildren.

Laura Schiffman, her 15-year-old granddaughter, looking serene and beautiful, comforted us all after the ceremony, giving away sunflowers from Suzanne's garden in Vaison. They were her favourite flower.

• Suzanne Schiffman, film-maker, born September 27 1929; died June 6 2001

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