To be a kid.

The 400 Blows – (Francois Truffaut, 1959)  a.k.a. Les Quatre Cents Coup 

Francois Truffaut was one of the young directors to have come out of the French ‘new wave’ cinema, the term mostly referred to as the transition from the classics to the modern cinema. The 400 Blows is Truffaut’s first feature-length film. He started as a filmmaker at a young age of 27.

While this being a very personal film because most of the scenes are from Truffaut’s own childhood – and not a very pleasant and happy-go-lucky one – it is also the auteur’s paean to a lost childhood where bitter memories flood like hidden tears in the dark and the joys are as fleeting as pre-adolescent jokes. It can also be seen as a social critique to the issue of juvenile delinquency and as Truffaut would impress to us, and leading from his own experiences, the unattentive home and faulty parenting to the uncaring and unjustified educational system.

In 400 Blows, Truffaut places himself in the shoes of Antoine Doniel, a carefree 12-year old who is about to discover the dog-eat-dog world. His uncaring parents are made up of a deceitful and fed-up mother who wants to get out of their impverished situation (Antoine once caught he kissing another man on the streets) and a friendly but out-of-touch patriarch who can't really seem to establish a genuine father-and-son bond with him. At school, Antoine is unjustly stereotyped by his authoritative teacher as troublemaker without having to see the boy's potential. When a picture of a scantily clad blond is passed around the class, the teacher finds it in the hands of Antoine and makes the boy stand in the corner without having to finish his test.

Because of the disintegrating situation at home and school, this leads Antoine to abandon schooling making forged excuse letters and making alibis like the death of his mother. He is accompanied by his classmate-friend Rene who has gained Antoine's trust and together they managed to steal a typewriter and sell it; however Antoine decides to return it where he is eventually caught. He is sent to a jail with thugs and hookers cramped in a tiny cell and later to the Observation Center for Juvenile Delinquents where he realizes that his parents has truly despised and abandoned him. 

One of the poignant scenes that I really liked was the interrogation part and Jean Pierre Lieaud portrays Antoine with a mix of honesty and naivete. His Antoine is deeply felt — we are with him in his escapades and we mourn with him at his darkest moments. (I think I last saw a grown-up Lieaud as a self-absorbed boyfriend of Maria Schneider in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.)

The concluding scene where Antoine ran away from a soccer game to a nearby beach where the camera finally zooms in Antoine's face staring directly at the audience is perhaps the most famous one. It may appear detached at first but for me this part is very instinctive, a trademark Truffaut, who once said that he is not interested in anything but capturing the agony and the joy of cinema. In this scene, he captures the height of joy both liberating and instinctive. In an earlier conversation, we would learn that Antoine dreamt of being in the Navy because he never went to the sea before, secluded in the old Parisian streets and buildings. When Antoine stares at us, its as if we are actually staring at ourselves, at our own childhood bereft of the joys and pains.