The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows

1959
Director: Francois Truffaut
Writers: Francois Truffaut (scenario), Marcel Moussy (adaption)
Starring: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claire Maurier

This is one of those movies that is kind of a movie nerd must see and yet for some reason I had never seen it. I’m not really sure why, I don’t have an aversion to French New Wave Cinema, I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I watched it last night and thought it was just brilliant.

One thing that I noticed right away is the fact that French kids, just like American kids, are bad. All these kids do is fight, steal, lie, smoke, and drink. Seriously, that’s what they do all the time. In this film one of the kids, Antoine, is having a rough go of it. He is fed up with school, his home life isn’t great, his mother is an insufferable bitch, and he is just looking for a way out. He decides his best option is to run away from home and start his own life.

He has a friend who is, essentially a professional juvenile delinquent, who helps him out. He tries it once and is back at home the next day after he goes to school and his parents show up to pick him up. You would think he would have had the sense not to go back to school as that is probably the first place they would look but, there he was. He tries to make a go of it again and all seems to be getting better but eventually it all starts to fall apart again for young Antoine and he hits the road again.

You get the idea of what the film is about so I don’t want to say anything else about that. What I got from this film is a complete and total sense of isolation for Antoine. He had some friends in school and his father seemed to be a fairly decent guy who tried to befriend his son as much as possible. In spite of this, it always seemed that Antoine was completely alone. Even when things were going well he knew deep down that nobody could help him.

There was one scene in this movie that portrayed that emotion so perfectly that I thought I was going to cry. I’m not one to cry at a lot of movies but I’m also not going to pretend I never have. This was one of those times where I was nearly brought to tears. Truffaut did a masterful job of weaving this story of a troubled child and making him a very sympathetic character. I was able to see myself as a youth in Antoine’s eyes. I could feel his pain and agony at every turn. This is a brilliant piece of film making.

If you are the sort of person who has to have 100% closure at the end of a movie then this is definitely not the choice for you. If you were frustrated by the end of No Country for Old Men then you will probably want to avoid this. I thought the ending was absolutely brilliant. Then again I thought the same thing about the ending of the Soprano’s for many of the same reasons. So if you enjoy gritty human interest pieces and are not averse to subtitled foreign films, and if you are then get the hell out of my blog, then this is certainly a masterpiece that was well deserved of all the praise it has received over these many years.