The French New Wave: a Series of Reviews and Analysis
400 Blows Film Summary
The film is about bastard child Antoine, as his youthful exuberance is slowly drained from him by his desolate life. Antoine uses pranks and mischief to express himself and escape conformity, which inevitably leads to more trouble than he can handle. Together, with a friend, he steals a type-writer from his father, and is caught and turned into the police. Antoine is banished to a work camp where he is stifled yet again. This is too much for young Antoine, as he finally snaps and attempts escape. Antoine runs to his coveted beach, looks back at the shore, and finally realizes that he has no place left to go. The final freeze frame fully expresses the horror and inevitable submission by Antoine-- he has been broken.
Film Analysis: Francois Truffaut and Self Reflexivity
In French Films Anne Gillain states in her 1959 article, "The Script of Delinquency: Francois Truffaut's Les 400 coups" (1959), that "In the first scene at school, an ironic vignette shows a little boy struggling to copy down a poem. He will end up lost in an ocean of ink and crumpled paper. This episode metonymically refers to Antoine's own difficulties...."(152) As Antoine must struggle with an inevitable conformity, so must the filmmaker. Truffaut uses 400 Blows as a way to deal with his childhood, but yet the filmic embodiment opens old wounds. In every scene the auteur screams for a release from his past, but knows all too well of the impending tragedy . The 400 Blows is Truffaut yearning for a change, wishing his childhood could have gone better, but inevitably realizing fate can not be altered.
Responsibility of the Auteur: Vulnerability of a Troubled Filmmaker
The 400 Blows is a definite expression of Truffaut's feeling towards the treatment of youth, but beyond that the film must thematically be able to stand on it's own. Truffaut himself has "expressed some degree of displeasure when critics labeled his work autobiographical." (Gillain 142). Andre' Bazin , "On the politique des auteurs"in Cahiers du Cinema 70 (April 1957), explains his feelings toward the Auteur: "I do not see the role of the auteur in the cinema in the same way as Francois Truffaut or Eric Rohmer for example, it does not stop me believing to a certain extent in the concept of the auteur...I find that the work transcends the director..." (293). A film auteur is responsible for making each and every film the best it can be. While, one film can amplify the meaning of another, there is never a guarantee of what an audience will have seen.
Bazin would argue that It doesn't matter what happened to Truffaut as a child, or what work he has done in the past. All that matters is what we see on the screen. A film is what it is, and no further justification can change what is on screen. Within Bazin's article he concludes: "the politique des auteurs seems to me to hold and defend an essential critical truth that cinema needs more than the other arts, precisely because an act of true artistic creation is more uncertain and vulnerable in cinema than elsewhere."(258)
The 400 Blows is a film that demonstrates the failings of society, as a spirited young boy has his creativity and imagination crushed both at home and at school. Truffaut does an amazing job of building a total sense of hopelessness and despair; there are very few movies as depressing as The 400 Blows. While The 400 Blows is by no means a perfect film, it's influence of french cinema can still be seen today.
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