Our Favorite Films: "400 Blows"

by Arturo Virzi

The 400 Blows is a magnificent masterpiece by the critic-turned-director Françoise Truffaut, not just because of its historical importance and artistic value, but because of its emotional resonance with the audience. The film follows a young boy by the name of Antoine Doinel, who is heading for a life of crime in the streets of Paris. This unwanted child is nothing but a mere product of his own parents disinterest in him, and by the time we first see him, the harm has already been done. It was one of the first times in cinema that the center of gravity lays on a young boy, while the adults seem to act unsympathetic and relentless. Doinel is not only sympathetic, but can also be described as an epitome of the coming-of-age genre anti-hero, al’a Holden Caulfield. From forging letters, to skipping school, lying to his parents and stealing a typewriter, we witness his downfall not as a sequence of tragic events, but as mere childish angst and anger. Francoise Truffaut pays tribute to his hero, Alfred Hitchcock, not by name, but by style. He is obviously influenced by American films as much as French, and he chooses to shoot the film with a realistic documentary style, but employed with elaborate track shots, and conventional wide angle shots, that show Paris in a beautiful nostalgic light. But one of the films defining characteristics is that it does not offer trite nostalgia, or clichéd plotting. Instead we get an extremely honest, sympathetic, and wholly heartbreaking observation of youth gone astray. Together with Breathless, The 400 Blows was one of the first films of the film phenomenon known as French New Wave, and still proves itself to be a timeless seminal work.

                The misunderstood Doinel has a whole mystery of his own. The film has certain levity to it; nothing is brought up with too much attention other than the famous, and synonymous final shot. The shot has Doinel running away from the observation center and reaching the ocean, only to turn back again and face the audience. This is the first time he sees the ocean. The ambiguous scene has been interpreted by many. Some say Doinel is Truffaut’s alter-ego, and he simply comes clean at the end, by washing his feet at the end of the film, as a symbol to the film he just made about himself, and about his melancholic childhood. The scene is powerful and extremely emotional. The fact that the film has such an emotional resonance even today is a testament to its greatness. It has no cheap melodramatic formulas, and its hard to describe the plot because one could say it doesn’t really have one. The premise is clear, but the plot isn’t derived out of someone’s imagination, the plot results in the conflict between the characters, similar to the way it works in real life. The tension between Doinel and his parents, the troubles of Doinel at school, these aren’t simple paradigms the film uses to move on a story, but more like a playground it decides to use for its players to expand. The film has one particular shot, where Doinel stands inside a police vehicle with three hookers and a criminal, and he is being driven away from home. As he looks through the bars outside into the streets of Paris, we get the sense Doinel has been nothing but a victim of his own fate as a product of his environment. That sad nostalgic shot of Paris left me speechless, thanks not only to Jean-Pierre Leaud singular performance, but to Jean Constantin, the composer.

                Not all is sad and gloom in Doinels life though. We take a peek at the positive things such as his good friendship, and his love for the writer Balzac. We also see self-referential glimpses of Truffaunt love of film, and he sneaks into the movie theater with his friend when he’s supposed to be at school. In fact, one of the rare “happy moments” in the film is about Doinel going together with his family to the cinema and watching a film. If the film is as autobiographical as its author says it is, film might have saved Truffaut from a life of crime. I wish I could say more about the film, but the truth is that it has to been seen by everyone. I cannot sum up in this short article the great impact a film like this has on the soul.