Movies – The 400 Blows

Jean Pierre Leaud in “The 400 Blows.” credit: institutfrancais-nigeria.com

One of the great coming-of-age films of our modern era, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups) (France, 1959) brings a far more personalized narrative style to film. Truffaut, as an acolyte of the great film critic André Bazin and an accomplished critic himself, railed against the theatrical pretense of mainstream French films, the “Quality Tradition” of the late forties and fifties. Eschewing elaborate linear narratives, melodramatic acting performances, hidebound and prosaic photographic strategies and ostentatious art direction, Truffaut’s debut film is semi-autobiographical, and streamlines the narrative to his protagonist’s direct experiences. All we know of his objective life – his school, his Paris neighborhood, his family – we only learn as he himself encounters and passes through it.

“He,” of course, is Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud), as reliable a love-addled recurring cinematic character as has been invented. Here, in The 400 Blows, he’s about 14-years-old, living with his mother and stepfather in a tiny Paris walk-up apartment. The 30-minute short film Antoine And Colette, one of five episodes by five different directors in Love At Twenty (France, 1962), features Antoine at 17, infatuated with a music student (Marie-France Pisier) who isn’t all that interested in him. Stolen Kisses (France, 1968) finds Antoine dishonorably discharged from the military, but still pursuing his heart (and libido) in awkward-but-good-hearted fashion. Antoine has married in Bed And Board (France, 1970), but is getting divorced in Love On The Run (France, 1979).

Truffaut (and his talented cinematographer, Henri Decaë, behind the camera for many landmark French films of the 50s through the 70s) opens the film with a low-angle collage of apartment buildings, workplaces and warehouses, with nary a glimpse of city streets, but nonetheless featuring the Eiffel Tower looming over all – the hive rather than the city itself. The Paris of Parisians. Young Antoine Doinel is where he should be – in school, though he’s not thrilled. A sexy pin-up photo circulates around the classroom (the school is definitely not co-ed), and he can’t help the urge to draw a moustache on her. The teacher, “Sourpuss,” (Guy Decomble) catches him and puts him in the corner. Antoine then poetically documents his unfair treatment on the schoolroom wall. After another upbraiding or two, Sourpuss then gives him an assignment: conjugate the phrase “I deface the classroom and abuse French verse” in indicative, conditional and subjunctive tenses. Antoine probably can, but we’re catching on to him, and it’s no surprise that he doesn’t. Not having the work for the next day, he skips with his pal René, visits the cinema, the pinball arcade and a carnival, and sets into motion a series of evasions, denials and mistruths that will eventually lead to his forced estrangement from both friends and family.

Jean Pierre Leaud in “The 400Blows.” credit: notanotherremake.wordpress.com

Antoine nicks small bits of money from his parents, and can scarcely believe his ears when his fellow students admit that they don’t. One of them has a brand-new pair of motorcycle goggles that will later be passed around the classroom and destroyed – no teacher witnesses that, oddly. Antoine’s father can’t find his Michelin guide… mysterious; he belongs to the Lion’s Club, and races rally cars on weekends, but we have no idea what he or his wife do for their meager living. Antoine sees his mother kissing another man while playing hooky. Mom tries to bribe Antoine into applying himself to his schoolwork more diligently, so he plagiarizes his idol, Honore de Balzac. Antoine sees it as a tribute, an homage, a display of his intelligence and good taste. Sourpuss, of course, disagrees, and suspends him for the rest of the semester. Not interested in facing that music, Antoine runs away from home, crashing at his buddy René’s place where he plays backgammon and smokes René’s father’s cigars. He steals a typewriter from Dad’s office to sell for living money, gets double-crossed, and is arrested when he tries to return it.

But Antoine’s not just a grumpy little aspiring criminal. Antoine’s demeanor is both antic and serious-minded, beleaguered but undaunted; he has genuine fun out with Mom and Dad to the movies, even though he knows they’re not particularly interested in having him around on a regular basis. And Truffaut keeps delivering little episodes of slapstick to keep things animate: one of Antoine’s classmate’s struggles manfully with a pen and inkwell; exercising students making their escape from the gym teacher leading them on a jog through the city (a tour de force sequence for Decaë); Antoine and René shoot spitballs at pedestrians from a rooftop. Adolescence is hard, and family dynamics are tricky, but fun is where you find it.

Claire Maurier, Jean Pierre Leaud and Albert Rémy in “The 400 Blows.” credit: curzonartificialeye.com

The 400 Blows is one of those films that fans can revisit every few years and find something new. It’s engaging and amusing, but Truffaut takes Antoine’s growing pains quite seriously. In Antoine’s struggles, awkwardness and self-possession, it’s easy to recall our own disparate experiences, and what they nonetheless have in common, miles and years away. The last moments have Antoine running away from the “Observation Center” (we’d call it The Boys’ School, or Juvie), by himself, through a rural pathway to a beach, then across the beach to the edge of the water. He arcs away, walks towards us, stares directly at the camera, and Truffaut freezes that last look on Antoine’s face. There are chapters and chapters of stories in that young man’s face – we’re lucky that François Truffaut got to tell us five of them.