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.

Sautet has subsequently turned out a number of finely observed social studies, often documenting the relations between large numbers of characters. Scenes set on beaches came to be over the years practically a trademark of his work, which he approached with a quiet irony and maturity. For years he was best known in the US for "Cesar et Rosalie" (1972), which teamed Yves Montand and Schneider in Sautet's answer to Francois Truffaut's "Jules et Jim"; "Vincent, Francois, Paul and Others" (1976), a tale of a crisis in the friendship of three middle-aged men facing their many failures and disappointments; and "A Simple Story" (1979), nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film, a portrait of a working woman and the people in her orbit.

Sautet moved more firmly into melodrama with "Un Mauvais Fils/A Bad Son" (1980) and comedy with "Garcon!/Waiter!" (1983). His later "A Few Days with Me" (1989) proved to be a relatively uncharacteristic departure into more youthful territory, while youth and middle age crossed paths in the artful "Un Coeur en hiver" (1992). An intimate film about a love triangle that includes Emmanuelle Beart as a violin virtuoso, Daniel Auteuil as a violin maker, and Andre Dussollier as a violin dealer, "Un Coeur" was a typically quiet but remarkably rich character study which extended Sautet's formidable string of art-house critical triumphs. He enjoyed another success with 1995's "Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud", a chamber romance about a love triangle between an elderly writer, his female secretary with whom he falls in love, and his younger publisher who courts the woman.