Francois Truffaut’s The
400 Blows is one of the most important films of the French New Wave and one
of the most intensely moving coming of age stories ever to be put on screen.
The director’s first film, made before his 27th birthday, the movie
is an exemplar of Truffaut’s best qualities as a filmmaker: his clarity,
honesty, directness, his simplicity and deep feeling. A semiautobiographical movie,
The 400 Blows follows the 12 year old
Antoine Dionel (Jean-Pierre Leaud,
who would reprise the role another four
times), typecast by his mostly absent parents and socially incompetent
teachers as a troublemaker and a liar, and lets us share in his minor joys and
sorrows. The film’s personal nature is made obvious even before the opening
credits, when we find out the film is dedicated to influential critic of Cahiers
du Cinema and Truffaut’s mentor, Andre Bazin. The sense of intimacy
and immediacy continues through the first few shots of the movie, long fluid
takes of the middle-class quarters of the city in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
This is a Parisian’s Paris,
seen in traveling shots of the empty streets and buildings and low angle shots directly
under the tower, not the postcard cityscape establishing shots.
