Head over to the Google homepage this morning and you'll see a brand new doodle. It features a forlorn man in black and white gazing out to sea. So what's going on?
The doodle celebrates French filmmaker Francois Truffaut's 80th birthday. The image pays homage to the famous freeze-frame ending of Truffaut's first feature film Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows).
That's not all there is to it -- click the arrow to the right and you'll see Google has knocked up two other doodles to celebrate Truffaut's birthday.
Truffaut was a major player in the French new wave scene of the 1960s, and has had a major influence on Martin Scorsese, among many others. He started off working at a French cinema magazine before moving into movie making himself, embracing the auteurs of America like Nicholas Ray and Alfred Hitchcock.
Truffaut won the award for best director at the Cannes Film Festival for 1959's Les Quatre Cent Coups -- a year earlier he'd been banned from the same festival. The movie was said to be semi-autobiographical, being about a troubled adolescent who commits petty crimes.
Truffaut went on to direct gangster flick Shoot The Piano Player, then Jules and Jim, a Bohemian romantic drama. His output was varied in subject matter, and in 1965 he directed the American production of Fahrenheit 451, the film version of Ray Bradbury's classic novel. His other notable films include The Bride Wore Black, Mississippi Mermaid, The Wild Child and Day for Night, which won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1973. Truffaut died in 1984.
For a full archive of Google doodles, head to the gallery. Or you can buy your favourites on mugs, t-shirts and more here.
Which is your all-time favourite doodle? Let us know in the comments below, or over on Facebook.
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