Essential Films: The 400 Blows (1959)

If you've ever felt like the whole world is against you, then you may relate to Antoine Doinel, protagonist of Francois Truffaut's seminal masterpiece The 400 Blows. It is indeed hard to talk about the great movements of cinema without talking about the French New Wave; just as it is hard to talk about the French New Wave without talking about Francois Truffaut, harder still to talk about Francois Truffaut without talking about this 1959 game-changer. One might easily say that at that particular time Truffaut was in the perfect position to make a coming-of-age drama of misfortune and rebellion: just that year, he had been kicked out of the Cannes film festival for his harsh criticisms of other directors. Yet with The 400 Blows, Truffaut came around the following year and swept away their prize for Best Director, a feat all the more stunning considering this was his debut film. Film critic Eric Snider compares this to "getting thrown out of a comedy club for heckling one weekend, then winning the open-mic competition the next."¹

To be honest, I don't believe I've ever seen a French film quite as masterful, as touching, or as elegant as this one- and considering France is pretty much the birthplace of cinema, that's really saying something. Upon its initial screening, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times spoke of it as being "a small masterpiece" with "overwhelming insight".² But not only did the film glean immediate praise across the globe, but sixty years later it still stands strong as an enduring classic of French cinema. Filmmakers and critics alike have consistently described it as not only one of the greatest films ever made, but also one that they could place among their personal favorites, with Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa calling it "one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen".³

The film begins with a series of tracking shots shown behind the opening credits, shots which have been interpreted as the point of view of a child staring out of a car window⁴- which makes sense, considering the significance of the only other scene in the film where we truly do have a child's perspective of Paris as seen through a car window. What we see here is that from the very first frame, Truffaut has crafted a film highly conscious of its own visual language, frequently employing clever fades, jump cuts, match cuts, and on numerous occasions, long takes. Truffaut does this in attempt to move forward his vision of the auteur: that is, a vision of film which places the director as the dominant creative force behind any project. The aim was to elevate classic cinema to the same level of respect as classic literature, so that with the director seen as the author, the camera could be seen as the pen- in the French: caméra-stylo.⁵

Now from the outside, The 400 Blows may appear to be your typical European art-house film- impenetrable and cerebral- and I understand where that bias comes from. But contained within this film is a certain honesty that's not likely to be found in many other coming-of-age films- it may be sophisticated, but it doesn't bear the attitude of an adult looking back at their teenage years as much as it does the attitude of the teenager. It manages to encapsulate such a wide spectrum of human feelings and experience, but it doesn't allow an emotional narrative to degenerate into a sentimental one. Instead of sugar-coating the past through the deceptive lens of nostalgia, it achieves realism through portraying adolescence as the painful time of life that it is. And even then, it doesn't sink into the trap of becoming your typical Hollywood sob story- in fact, many of the film's most memorable moments are its most tender. There are times of great warmth joy as well as times of sadness. There are so many little things that remain true about the teenage experience to this day: like that moment where you wake up for school and you realize you've forgotten to do your homework, or when your parents try to comfort you by telling you a story about their teenage years, remaining completely oblivious of how unhelpful they are. More relatable than anything else is perhaps the constant state of subtle paranoia that Antoine lives in; as shown by his need to hide everything from his parents. In the mind of a growing child, even something more or less innocent could be misinterpreted by a suspicious parent. 

Even though the entire film seems to be told in a series of small episodes, each episode strings together remarkably well into a chain of causes and effects that stretch across the entire film in a plot so vast it defies summary, setting up a theme of actions and consequences. Antoine runs away from home because he got caught lying, he lied because he skipped school the previous day, he skipped school because he was punished in class, and he was punished in class because a classmate passed him a pinup. Much of what happens to Antoine during the film can be attributed to cruel fate, some kind of archetypal victimization- parents and teachers will always have a tendency to be misguided, just as children will always have a tendency to be mischievous. Yet if there is one concept that haunts him like no other, it's responsibility. Many of his actions throughout the film are merely attempts to dodge the consequences of previous actions. This isn't surprising when we discover that his parents are just as irresponsible as he is- they're almost eager to relinquish him over to the care of the state's rehab programs. With every pivotal scene between Antoine and his parents, his mother is reminded of her responsibility to her child, and his step-father is reminded of the responsibility that he adopts by marrying her. Antoine is certainly not without blame, but what he undergoes is not unlike the downfall of a Greek tragic hero- a catharsis- that is, a releasing of great repressed emotions, leading to a greater kind of self-discovery. As an adolescent, protagonist Antoine Doinel is constantly reshaping his understanding of the world around him as he encounters it. His character is thrust from the innocent and puerile world of childhood into the harsh world of adulthood, where he must confront the issues of sexuality and responsibility as they are exemplified by the adults in his life. Through this confrontation he plunges into a struggle for identity- perhaps the most prominent of the film's themes.

The adult world Antoine discovers is not merely hostile, but indifferent.⁶ Many of Doinel's actions are not out of malice or bitterness, but rather desperation: he is caught in a constant struggle to be noticed by a modern urban environment which has neither want nor need for him. At times, the outlet for this is creative expression, at other times, outright misdemeanor. In one of Doinel's English classes, a student is asked to pronounce aloud the question "Where is the father?" This brings our attention to Antoine's unspoken past- where is the father?⁷ This is a question that's only revealed to us at the end of the film, where we're given the real context for the boy's passive-aggressive attitude towards his mother. The mother constantly attempts to mask the fact that Antoine is little more than a burden keeping her from a happier life- in many ways trying to live like she did before she gave birth to him. Doinel's stepfather tries to keep a warm and positive attitude towards his stepson, when really he's just tolerating him- which, for Antoine, is more painful than any physical abuse.

What is really taking place over the course of the film is a progression from innocence to enlightenment, in an arguably premature fashion, as the callous modern world produces a more experienced version of Antoine, but sadly a more hardened one. And yet, despite how many changes the central character goes through, he still covers virtually no ground. Supposing the opening shots really are the perspective of a child looking out the windows of an automobile, then the note the film begins on is an unsure one- in the back seat, Doinel is tossed about like a leaf on the wind, with fate as his driver. Arriving at the ocean, he encounters some sort of goal he's been subconsciously striving for this whole time- yet now that he's achieved this goal, he's at a literal dead end. He is now aimless, and the film ends just as unsure of Antoine's future as it was in the beginning. Staring forward into the camera, Doinel's face in the final-freeze frame presents a call-back to the mug-shots taken earlier in the film. One scene is within a setting of restriction and submission, the other in a setting of joyous liberation. This is not the only contrast present- as the claustrophobic apartment is now abandoned for a lonely stretch of sand on the shoreline. If anything has been gained, it is Antoine's freedom, regardless of its cost.

It makes sense that Truffaut should be able to make his story so realistic once you take into consideration how much of it is derived from Truffaut's own experiences as a child, who like his main character, was a juvenile delinquent who was almost aborted. He even once recalled using a parent's death as an excuse for missing class- an excuse far more plausible in the Nazi-occupied Paris of Truffaut's youth. Yet no matter how much Truffaut would like to present the film as being a product of the director, The 400 Blows owes just as much Jean-Pierre Léaud's superb acting as it does to Francois Truffaut's directing. In fact, Truffaut chose Jean-Pierre Léaud largely because the child actor reminded him so much of himself, and during filming the director would even allow him to improvise his own lines in some scenes. This is twice as impressive if you note that one of these scenes is the revelatory psychoanalysis sequence towards the end of the film.⁸ 

In many ways, The 400 Blows is just as rebellious as its antagonist. In its dedication to film critic Andre Bazin, who became a father figure to Truffaut in the later years of his life, and died just before the film began production, The 400 Blows declares itself as a love letter to cinema itself. This is further evidenced by the constant presence of the cinema in the life of Antoine Doinel, which mirrors the pivotal role it played as a safe haven in Truffaut's own adolescence. But more than an ode to film, The 400 Blows presented for its initial audiences a declarative shift in the world of film forever. Director Jean-Luc Godard says it best: "The face of French cinema has changed forever. Today, victory is ours."⁹

Sources:

¹Snider, Eric D. "What's the Big Deal?: The 400 Blows (1959)". Film.com. MTV Networks, 14 September 2010. Web. Retrieved 7 November 2015.

²Crowther, Bosley. "Screen: 'The 400 Blows'; A Small Masterpiece From France Opens". New York Times 17 November 1959. Print. 

³"The 400 Blows: PRO Reviews". Movie-Film-Review. Chris Tookey, n.d. Web. Retrieved 7 November 2015.

⁴Emerson, Jim. "Opening Shots: The 400 Blows". RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC, 17 March 2009. Web. Retrieved 7 November 2015.

⁵Insdorf, Annette. "The 400 Blows: Close to Home." Criterion. The Criterion Collection, 8 April 2014. Web. Retrieved 7 November 2015. 

⁶Thiher, Allen. "The Existential Play in Truffaut's Early Films." Literature Film Quarterly 5.3 (1977): 183-197. Print.

⁷Insdorf.

⁸Eggert, Brian. "The 400 Blows (1959)". Deep Focus Review. Deep Focus Review, 02 June 2012. Web. Retrieved on 7 November 2012.

⁹Milne, Tom, ed. Godard on Godard. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1986. Print.