Claude Berri, who as a director, producer, screenwriter and actor was among the most influential figures in the French film industry over the past 40 years, died Monday in Paris. He was 74 and was described after his death by President Nicolas Sarkozy as “the great ambassador of French cinema” to the world.

The cause was a stroke, his agent, Dominique Segall, said in a statement. Mr. Berri had been admitted to the hospital on Saturday with a “cerebral vascular problem,” he said.

Mr. Berri was, by and large, a filmmaker of mainstream sensibility who favored stories of either quirky charm — many drawn from his own life — or grand sweep. His best known films as a director include “The Two of Us” (1967), which tells a story much like that of his own childhood during the Nazi occupation of France, in which a Jewish boy is schooled in Catholicism and sent off to live with an anti-Semitic old man; and the twin 1986 films “Jean de Florette” and “Manon des Sources” (“Manon of the Springs”), together an extravagant adaptation of a classic French novel set in Provence by Marcel Pagnol, “L’Eau des Collines” (“Water of the Hills”).

But he was probably more influential as a producer, working with directors like Milos Forman (“Valmont”), Roman Polanski (“Tess”) and Philippe de Broca (“L’Africain”).