The 400 Blows is a French movie directed by Francois Truffaut that is about a child who runs away from home because of his neglectful parents. Antoine is a young Parisian boy who lives with his neglectful parents and has an abusive teacher at school. When he gets back from school, he uses some of his mom’s stuff and sets up the dinner table. After dinner, Antoine gets sent off to bed by either his mom or his stepfather when tensions start to rise between them.
After having a bad day at school and being ridiculed by his teacher, Antoine spent the next day ditching school with his best friend, Rene. When he came back to school the next day, Antoine made up an excuse that he wasn’t at school because his mother died, which got him caught by his parents. After Antoine was caught plagiarizing Balzac during class, he decided to quit and run away from school and home with Rene.
After spending multiple days at Rene’s place, Antoine steals his stepfather’s typewriter and then gets caught by him. Antoine is then sent to the police and spends the night in jail. He is then sent off to a place for troubled youths by the seashore, where a psychologist finds out about what has caused Antoine’s unhappiness. In the end, Antoine escapes from a football game to see the shore, which is what he has always wanted to see.
As one of the first “New Wave” films, The 400 Blows has some new features that are used. One of the “New Wave” features used in this film was location filming, which is filming at a real location rather than on a set or a backlot. For the past few movies studied like Sunset Boulevard or Casablanca, they were filmed on either a set or a backlot. Rear Window also was filmed on a backlot in order to portray a neighborhood in New York.
Another “New Wave” feature that was used in the film was that it was an autobiographical film. This film talked about the childhood and adolescence of the director, Francois Truffaut. The only film studied that was based on a person was Citizen Kane, which the character Charles Foster Kane was based on a real person. However, while Citizen Kane was a movie about the biography of a fictional character, The 400 Blows was based on the life of the director of the movie.
The 400 Blows is an interesting foreign film that kicked off the New Wave of films with its narrative of being autobiographical. It is a great coming of age movie as it focuses on Antoine and what he goes through when trying to run away from school and his home and what consequences it has. It is an interesting watch and if you are into foreign films, I would recommend giving this a watch.
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