Gerard Blain (October 23, 1930 – December 17, 2000), once dubbed ‘The French James Dean’, was for a time one of the best-known faces of the New Wave, starring in Francois Truffaut’s Les Mistons (1957) and Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins (both 1958). In the 1970s he made a successful transition into directing, starting with Les Amis (1971), which won the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival.