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The 400 Blows captures the world of a troubled adolescent in a manner that was vibrant, fresh, and thrilling for audiences viewing this seminal film in 1959. For the contemporary viewer with a receptive mind, the picture still delivers these sensations. Many of the techniques employed in this picture — freeze frames, fluid tracking shots, unusual editing rhythms — have long since been co-opted and overused in everything from exploitation pictures to television commercials. So it’s worth realizing that these stylistic devices were a sensation in 1959, before every aspiring filmmaker began using them to achieve similar effects. Today these innovations are an ingrained part of our film vocabulary.

Truffaut’s cinematic surrogate, actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, was not yet 14 when he starred in 400 Blows, the director’s premiere feature. Léaud would go on to appear as Antoine Doinel in four more films: as an adolescent in Truffaut’s Antoine et Colette (the director’s contribution to the anthology film L’Amour à Vingt Ans, aka Love at 20), later finding a girlfriend in Baisers Voles (Stolen Kisses) and subsequently marrying her in Domicile Conjugal (Bed & Board), with a sad denouement in L’Amour en Fuite (Love on the Run).

Read more: Cinema Uprising

This is an important film to watch. It’s important for multiple reasons, and not the least of all being Truffaut’s awe-inspiring camera work. It may be in black and white, but these shots have color and life in them all the same. You can almost feel the atmosphere throughout the film. Every environment has a subtle way of creeping into your subconscious and right now as I’m writing this I am paying back shots in my head which are silently beautiful and emotional. Technically the film is literally flawless.

The other major aspect which stands out as notable has to be the acting. How Truffaut got such fantastic work from a cast composed mainly of children is something directors should strive for. Their line deliverance shocked me on many occasions throughout the 100 minutes. They have a presence on screen which is practically never felt by actors of their age, and Jean-Pierre Leaud outshines everyone else in the movie. His performance brought life to the screen.

The story itself is a bold and sometimes shocking portrayal of a child who has been raised extremely poorly and as a result begins to act out. You are brought along with him as he makes bad decisions creating more and more problems for himself. And yet, you always have a reason to feel sorry for him because he is really a product of his environment. Truffaut masterfully reveals more about this boys’ past as the story progresses until you are left with a complete view of his faults and his unfortunate upbringing, and ultimately, how those two correlate.

Like I said, this is an important film to see because of the masterful way Truffaut portrays this powerful story.

Let’s just assume that the Nouvelle Vague was all about youth, being fresh and new? I find that Les 400 Coups most fully captures this spirit. No matter of its relative subtlety to pictures like Adieu Philipine or A Bout de Souffle. I just can’t escape from the notion that within a decade’s time, the Nouvelle Vague had somewhat lost most of its enthusiastic origins in order to become a machine constantly manufacturing what had already become tradition. Is that true? Maybe, maybe not. I am really questioning the origins and downfalls of every movement. How they are perceived. For instance, ask anyone about the Nouvelle Vague and there’s a much smaller chance of talking about Muriel (1963, pay attention to the dates) or Les Creatures (1966) than A Bout de Souffle (1960, that it all might not have kicked off with out) or Les 400 Coups (1959). Please, don’t worry if that all seemed like nonsense, just read on: It’s well known by now that the story is that of a 14-year-old boy, Antoine Doinel. That he is smothered by every adult he knows because they fail to understand him. That eventually he becomes such a menace to them that he is sent to a brutal reform school from which he escapes, running until he reaches the sea. He stops at the shore, finally free of his world, and walks toward us and looks at us. But the very moment he does the frame freezes, zooms and the film ends. Surely one of the most beautiful sequences ever filmed, and I fear, that by writing about it, I may have killed it. But then, nothing can compare to actually witnessings it, this moment of perfect balance between radicalism and poignancy.

There’s really nothing wrong with it at all, technically it’s flawless. I think Francois Truffaut is an excellent director and has a very modest yet impacting vision. All the acting is well done and everything seems to fit the characters. The thing that makes me not see it as one of those “greatest movies ever made” is that I really don’t think the story or the message is all that interesting. I realize that a minimalist style was being used and that you aren’t supposed to respect Antoine, you either relate to him (and fall in love with the character) or you don’t. I saw him as being a little too much, it was as if he was a little too one noted. The story follows that same note, it doesn’t have a giant relevatory conclusion. It sort of just ends and that’s all there is, until the sequels that follow.

At times François Truffaut is spot on with his composition and creates beautiful and remembered scenes with potential for character development. But if the purpose of the director was to portray characters that don’t change from their experience as a teenager, than the movie could have been 40 minutes shorter. Although there are times, when the viewer is transported to either their past or the romantic parts of adolescence (confusion or freedom), the viewer gains little from their character portrayals and few moments to grab a hold of for a second viewing.

for those who wonder what the title means: in french, “faire les 400 coups” (i.e. to do the 400 blows) means to cause mischief. the english translation loses that meaning completely, unfortunately, which is why it sounds so bizarre to english speakers. (that said, “les 400 coups” on its own doesn’t mean anything in french either, so you could say the french title isn’t that literal to begin with.)

as for my review of the film: i was floored. great, great cinema. i hugely enjoy the rest of the antoine doinel series also (well, the fourth one less so perhaps).

The 400 blows is one of the movies that I would never forget, the photography, the action of Jean-Pierre Leaud and especially the music, were elements that make this movie a good one. I really don´t know the meaning of the title, but I think that it could be related with what Truffaut wanted to show at the movie, which was not only expressing most of his experience at his childhood, but also to show the contrast between the meaning of what crime represents for a boy and for an adult, because to a boy it has been taught to him that even the most innocent action is a crime, whereas an adult can crash his car against a tree and this simply represent an " accident", an that is evident at the film since Antoine was punished for the smallest of the incidents at the school. well I hope someone would understand what I tried to say, my english is horrible.

The first of a series of four films featuring Truffaut’s semi-autobiographical character Antione Doinel, The 400 Blows is a seminal film of the New Wave, and one of the best films ever made about childhood. Antione is a boy on the cusp of entering his teen years, and his home life is both psychologically traumatic and on the verge of abject poverty. The film explores his trials and tribulations while also delving into an expose of France’s treatment of juvenile deliquency at the time. Its final shot is deservedly lauded as one of the most affecting in cinema.

Truffaut applies the writers dictum of ‘write what you know’ to film, and he picks a ‘very good place to start’, childhood.
I came to 400 Blows years ago not knowing the French slang connotations of the title. I assumed for some time after that it was an allusion to the ‘school of hard knocks’ that the central character Antoine was growing up in. Even now I know it means ‘to raise hell’ I feel it’s literal English interpretation has some validity given the slings and arrows Antoine suffers, physically and emotionally. For those of us that had the fortune to enjoy an idyllic childhood this is a tough film to digest. Truffaut eschews sentimentality, intuitively knowing that the ‘reportage’ approach needs no melodrama or manipulation for effect when the central dilemma is so compelling.

The film opens with a jaunty Paris travelogue sequence, over which a saccharin score evokes every cliche in the book. Truffaut seems to be saying, ‘so you think this is Paris? I’ll show you Paris’. We settle in a classroom scene, so familiar it could be any number of places across several eras, where Antoine is immediately a victim of circumstance and takes the punishment on behalf of his classmates, later staking his territory by scrawling his innocence on the wall. It’s an important statement of defiance, and sets the tone for how Antoine sees himself.
Any French film involving schoolboys can’t help but evoke Vigo’s ‘Zero Pour Conduite’, and some of the playful aspects of 400 Blows have some of that tone, the later slapstick street march with the physical education teacher particularly. If there are echoes of any other director in Truffaut it has to be Renoir. While his peers like Godard and Malle were re-envisaging US noir type scenarios for their debuts, or looking outward, Truffaut was turning the microscope inward (pure Renoir) so even when social politics is involved, it’s via the prism of the personal.

Truffaut takes incidents from his own life and others he’d heard about from schoolfriends and weaves a haunting web from the accumulated shards. Cliches are revealed to be multi dimensional. Lovers kissing on the streets of Paris may be a postcard to some, but for Antoine who stumbles across his mother and another man, it’s a stark betrayal. The strands that tenuosly hold life and soul together for this indominatable child seem at peril of unravelling at any time. Antoine experiences the agony of an overheard conversation between his mother and step father where he’s treated as if he’s an annoying dog to be found a home so they can get on with the lives he’s preventing them from leading. This is of course their own pain projected onto their son. His mother is constantly disappointed by a life she obviously expected more from. Truffaut casts Claire Maurier who has a kind of fading allure to subtlely underscore the lost promise of beauty. We later learn to heartbreaking effect that she’d wanted to abort Antoine who owes his life to his Grandmothers refusal to support such a course of action.
As bleak as these moments are, Truffaut leavens the mix with stolen moments of bliss. Antoine and his friend Rene spend a day skipping school, enjoying the delights of a funfair and it’s siren tune, but maybe knowing they’ll be paying the piper soon enough.

Truffaut repeatedly reinforces that it’s a flimsy thread holding the component pieces of Antoine’s life in place. Between disasters at school, and threats of enrollment into the military at home, there’s a constant unease at how solid a base his life has. His step father is equally unable to satisfy his mother and Antoine just seems a complication neither of them want. Even a happy time going to the cinema with his parents, one of the only joys in his life, soon fades as the excuse for washing their hands of him completely presents itself.

The film is carried manfully on tiny 15 year old shoulders by Jean-Pierre Leaud. Truffaut was so impressed with his audition piece he wrote to JP’s writer-director father Pierre offering him a central role, not yet having decided if it would be that of Rene or Antoine. The naturalistic performance centres the film and leaves it free of artifice. Truffaut traces Antoines life with his documentary style camera always observing as an outsider, but in reality it is Antoine who is the ultimate outsider. He appears to be outside his own life and wants desperately to get in, therein lies the tragedy. His parents force him away emotionally at first, and ultimately physically, leaving Antoine to fend the various fates and blows alone. An attempt from his only real friend Rene to visit him at the institution fails, and Antoine takes matters into his own hands. Truffaut beautifully sums up the entire piece in the last sequence, finishing with the famous startling freeze frame, so expressive and so ambiguous, a young boy cut adrift by his carers and facing the world alone. Incredibly the shot seems to suggest nothing less than an existential crisis.

Truffaut didn’t change cinema in one fell swoop, he just re-focussed attention on what he considered important, and had a huge and justifiable impact. He cleared the cobwebs and reminded everyone of the value of ‘personal’ cinema, the universality of the human experience. Truffaut nailed his treatise to the Cathedral door with a film that trancends all trends and fashion and is destined to remain one of the most valuable cinematic documents we possess.

(SPOILERS)
Has there ever been a better first film?

Film enthusiast, critic for the influential French periodical Caheirs du Cinema (“Notebooks on Cinema”), and author of the auteur theory, Truffaut had already left a permanent impact on the cinema before he ever stepped behind the camera. As a critic, Truffaut passionately railed against what he considered the staid state of French cinema. Rather than critique from a safe distance, Truffaut entered the fray and changed cinema through iconoclastic example. He would become one of the leaders of the French New Wave" (“Nouvelle Vauge”) which rejected traditional cinematic technique and subject matter.

After seeing Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil,” Truffaut was inspired to channel his love of film into a directing career. His first film is a cinematic treasure and is an indisputable part of the canon. Want to begin your own cinema appreciation journey? Start here.

Like many a first time novelist, Truffaut looked to his own past to create an autobiographical tale. The film’s subject Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) would reappear in four Truffaut films each time played by the same actor. Antoine’s story is very similar to the director’s own life. A fatherless child, Truffaut was passed around from family member to family member then eventually reclaimed by his birth mother and stepfather. His guardians would tire of him, irritated by his delinquency, and hand him over to state custody and incarceration until he reached adulthood. Doinel, like Truffaut, would also spend a brief and and troubled stint in the French army.

“The 400 Blows” opens with an uninterrupted tracking shot that travels down a Paris street and escorts us into Antoine’s world. It’s an elliptical moment that will later be repeated in reverse when Antoine is taken away from home to become a ward of the state. It also prepares us for the film’s continual restless movement. Doinel is always on the run away from home and school and onto the streets of Paris. This tracking shot is accompanied by a jaunty theme that increasingly becomes more sad and wistful. In these simple opening moments we are given clues to the arc of the entire film.

Like the film’s musical theme, the first moments of “The 400 Blows” are playful. They resemble an “Our Gang” comedy as a classroom of pre-teens engage in mischief and are confounded by ruthless teachers and malfunctioning ink pens. Antoine, in a classroom full of goofballs, is repeatedly singled out by his teacher for correction and punishment. This continues at home where his mother and father are constant critics of Antoine and rarely offer positive reinforcement. Doinel, unhappy at home and at school, chooses truancy and constantly attempts to run away from his troubles. Antoine’s early experiences, forced marching by gym teachers, running from authority figures, being confined by exasperated by adults, are later repeated in the more sinister setting of juvenile detention. In the film’s haunting final moments, we glimpse toddler wards of the state placed in outdoor cages during recess at the juvenile detention facility. This, disturbingly, mirrors an earlier scene of adult prostitutes staring out from a holding cell as they await sentencing. “The child is the father of the man.”

Antoine’s mishaps are amusing at first, but as he is buffeted by adults at every turn, we begin to feel sympathy for the boy followed by pity and finally hopelessness. Doinel is an unwanted child. No wonder he runs. He is always a problem, never a blessing. There is, however, a brief respite for Antoine when he goes to the cinema with his parents. For Antoine, as for Truffaut, the movies offer a magical escape and a momentary chance for happiness.

“The 400 Blows” is a warning for parents and caregivers. It shows how neglect and constant negative reinforcement necessarily leads to a troubled adulthood. We are impacted by the tale, but not lectured. The film’s final moments are haunting and leave Antoine stranded and alone. As he once again runs away from confinement, Truffaut keeps Doinel trapped in the frame. Antoine is moving but he is always in the center of the screen. He is running away, but still confined. And as the film reaches its conclusion, the film freezes on Antoine’s face, trapped with nowhere to go. It’s a disturbing moment and creates a feeling of hopelessness in the viewer.

If you haven’t seen “The 400 Blows” do so as soon as possible. A masterpiece deserving of the superlative.

I thought of a short last year and wanted to shoot it right away. That was about a boy. But the final script wasn’t just about the boy’s night. It was the story of the boy’s country and that country’s history. It was then that I realized film is the most advanced medium of expression. I want to recreate the past. I want to dream with my films and “for a living.” It happens with most of the good art work, you can relate to it in many ways. Antoine Doinel (The 400 Blows) is the boy I have in mind for some time now.

Francois Truffaut said, “I make films that I would like to have seen when I was a young man.” I consider myself lucky that I watch films that are films I would like to make. But I have to come up with something original and entertaining. I am trying to watch different kind of films. But right now that’s not enough. I try to write. I try to observe people around me. Stories of struggle and success don’t intrigue me- it’s just work, work and work.

I watched the concluding scene of The 400 Blows (Les Quatre cents coups) repeatedly. Antoine’s escape is meaningful and also the most beautiful part of Traffuat’s most personal work. Some wrong slaps can change life for good! Shashilal K. Nair’s Ek Chhotisi Love Story is one Hindi film that was really a bold bolt! [Update: After I saw the original at FTII, I realized how disgusting Nair’s copy is.] I want to see work about adolescence. Maybe that’s the reason I like Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito so much. I have not seen many films but I have seen many good films and like I said- films that I would like to make.

I have two fascinating sci-fi ideas that can be worked upon. It will be great fun! I had thought of starting another story of a boy’s journey after high school to college. But I don’t want it to be run-of-the-mill because while developing the idea I realized it had more commercial appeal than artistic. Here is Speilberg’s advice when asked about being conflicted whether to make more artistic films, or more commercial films: “All the time, but when you have a story that is very commercial and simple, you have to find the art. You have to take the other elements of the film and make them as good as possible, and doing that will uplift the film.” That is convincing.

I have become a kid again. I used to read a lot about great men then with great interest and curiosity. Only now the men are filmmakers. One who started to loathe history has started to love it again. It’s not because contemporary filmmakers don’t fascinate me but I want to know the masters of the medium first. I have my own way of doing things and I have my own ideas and for that I don’t have to look any further. But I want to improve and learn as much as possible. I am not a typecast but there are some good old ways of doing things. “Some day I’ll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste.” There’s a right time for everything. Right now, money would only ruin me.

— August 14, ’08

I saw Les Quatre cents coups for the first time at the Sacramento French Film Festival (July ‘08). My friend and I loved it so much we came back to watch the second showing the next day. Favorite scenes have to be in the classroom. (Who doesn’t love the little boy with the notebook/ink problem?!) Brilliant, personal, and touching… 5 stars. If I ever have the run in a gym class again I’ll definitely ditch when the teacher isn’t looking.