The 400 Blows

For other uses, see The 400 Blows (disambiguation).

The 400 Blows
Criterion DVD cover
Directed by	François Truffaut
Produced by	François Truffaut
Written by	François Truffaut Marcel Moussy
Starring	Jean-Pierre Léaud Claire Maurier Albert Rémy Guy Decomble
Music by	Jean Constantin
Cinematography	Henri Decaë
Editing by	Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte
Distributed by	Cocinor
Release date(s)	France: 4 May 1959 United States: 16 November 1959
Running time	99 minutes
Country	France
Language	French

The 400 Blows (French: Les Quatre Cents Coups) is a 1959 French film directed by François Truffaut. One of the defining films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. The story revolves around Antoine Doinel, an ordinary adolescent in Paris, who is thought by his parents and teachers to be a trouble maker. The film had a total of 3,642,981 admissions in France, making it Truffaut's most successful film to date in his home country.

Title

The English title is a straight translation of the French but misses its meaning, as the French title refers to the expression "faire les quatre cents coups", which means "to raise hell". On the first American prints, subtitler and dubber Noelle Gilmore gave the film the title Wild Oats, but the distributor did not like that title and reverted it to The 400 Blows, which led some to think the film covered the topic of corporal punishment.

Plot

Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a 12-year old boy growing up in Paris during the early 1950s. Misunderstood at home by his parents and tormented in school by his insensitive teacher (Guy Decomble), Antoine frequently runs away from both places. The boy finally quits school after being accused of plagiarism by his teacher. He steals a typewriter from his father (Albert Remy) to finance his plans to leave home.

The father angrily turns Antoine over to the police, who lock the boy up with hardened criminals. Antoine spends the night in jail, sharing a cell with prostitutes and thieves. During an interview with the judge, Antoine’s mother confesses that Antoine’s father is not his biological father. Antoine is placed in an observation center for troubled youths near the shore (as per his mother's wishes). A psychiatrist at the center probes Antoine's unhappiness, which he reveals in a fragmented series of monologues.

One day, while playing football with the other boys, Antoine escapes under a fence and runs away to the ocean, a place he has wanted to visit his entire life. He reaches the shoreline of the sea, runs into it, then turns back to the land. The film concludes with the camera zooming in on Antoine's face, looking into the camera.

Cast

• Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel
• Claire Maurier as Gilberte Doinel, Antoine's mother
• Albert Rémy as Julien Doinel, Antoine's father
• Guy Decomble as School teacher (Sourpuss)
• Patrick Auffay as René Bigey, Antoine's best friend
• Georges Flamant as Monsieur Bigey, René's father
• Pierre Repp as English Teacher
• The Children: Daniel Couturier, François Nocher, Richard Kanayan, Renaud Fontanarosa, Michel Girard, Henry Moati, Bernard Abbou, Jean-François Bergouignan, Michel Lesignor;
• Luc Andrieux, Robert Beauvais, Bouchon, Christian Brocard, Yvonne Claudie, Marius Laurey, Claude Mansard, Jacques Monod, Henri Virlojeux.

Awards and nominations

The film was widely acclaimed, winning numerous awards, including the Best Director Award at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, the Critics Award of the 1959 New York Film Critics' Circle and the Best European Film Award at 1960's Bodil Awards. It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 32nd Academy Awards. The film currently holds a very rare 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 48 reviews.

The film is among the top ten of the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

Themes

A semi-autobiographical film, reflecting events of Truffaut's and his friend's lives, its style amounts to Truffaut's personal history of French film—most notably a scene borrowed wholesale from Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduite. It is dedicated to the man who became his spiritual father, André Bazin, who died just as the film was about to be shot.

Besides being a character study, the film is an exposé of the injustices of the treatment of juvenile offenders in France at the time.

Legacy

Truffaut made four other films with Léaud depicting Antoine at later stages of his life. He meets his first love, Colette, in Antoine and Colette, which was Truffaut's contribution to the 1962 anthology Love at Twenty. He falls in love with Christine Darbon (Claude Jade) in Stolen Kisses. He marries Christine in Bed and Board, but the couple have separated in Love on the Run.

Filmmakers Akira Kurosawa, Luis Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, Jean Cocteau, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Richard Lester and Norman Jewison have cited The 400 Blows as one of their favorite movies. Kurosawa called it "one of the most beautiful films that I have ever seen"

Ranked #29 in Empire magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.

External links

• The 400 Blows at the Internet Movie Database
• The 400 Blows at AllRovi
• The 400 Blows at Rotten Tomatoes
• Criterion Collection essay by Annette Insdorf
• Criterion Collection essay by Kent Jones for "Antoine and Colette"
• Review by Roger Ebert
• Senses of Cinema essay
• The 400 Blows: Verisimilitude and the (Re)presentation of the City