| The 400 Blows | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | François Truffaut |
| Written by |
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| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Henri Decaë |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Jean Constantin |
Production company | Les Films du Carrosse |
| Distributed by | Cocinor |
Release date |
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Running time | 99 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Box office | $30.7 million[2] |
The 400 Blows (French:Les quatre cents coups) is a 1959 Frenchcoming-of-agedrama film,[3] and the directorial debut ofFrançois Truffaut, who also co-wrote the film. Shot in theanamorphic formatDyaliScope, the film starsJean-Pierre Léaud,Albert Rémy, andClaire Maurier. One of the defining films of theFrench New Wave,[4] it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. Written by Truffaut andMarcel Moussy, the film is aboutAntoine Doinel (asemi-autobiographical character), a misunderstood adolescent in Paris, who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior. It was filmed on location, in Paris and Honfleur.
The 400 Blows received numerous awards and nominations, including theCannes Film Festival Award for Best Director, the OCIC Award, and aPalme d'Or nomination in 1959, and was also nominated for anAcademy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1960. The film had 4.1 million admissions in France, making it Truffaut's most successful film in his home country.[5]
The 400 Blows is widely considered one of the best films ever made; in the 2022Sight & Sound critics' poll ofthe greatest films ever made, it was ranked 50th.[6] It ranked 33rd in the directors' poll on the same list.
It is the first in a series of five films in which Léaud plays the lead character. The film is followed by a short film,Antoine and Colette (1962) and threelegacy sequels,Stolen Kisses (1968),Bed and Board (1970) andLove on the Run (1979), with the actor reprising his role as Doinel.
Antoine Doinel is a young boy growing up in Paris. Misunderstood by his parents for skipping school and stealing and tormented in school for disciplinary problems by his teacher (such as writing on the classroom wall and later lying about his absences as being due to his mother's death), he frequently runs away from both places. He finally quits school after his teacher accuses him of plagiarizingBalzac, though Antoine loves Balzac and in a school essay he describes "the death of my grandfather," in a close paraphrase of Balzac from memory. He steals a Royal typewriter from his stepfather's workplace to finance his plans to leave home, but being unable to sell it, he is apprehended while trying to return it.
The stepfather turns Antoine over to police and Antoine spends the night in jail, sharing a cell with prostitutes and thieves. During an interview with the judge, Antoine's mother confesses that her husband is not her son's biological father. Antoine is placed in anobservation center for troubled youths near the seashore (as his mother wished). A psychologist at the center looks for reasons for Antoine's unhappiness, which the youth reveals in a fragmented series of monologues.
While playing football with the other boys, Antoine escapes under a fence and runs away to the ocean, which he has always wanted to see. He reaches the shoreline of the sea and runs into it. The film concludes with a freeze-frame of Antoine, which, via anoptical effect, zooms in on his face as he looks into the camera.
Truffaut also included a number of friends (fellow directors) in bit or background parts, including himself andPhilippe De Broca in the funfair scene;Jacques Demy as a policeman;Jean-Luc Godard andJean-Paul Belmondo as overheard voices (Belmondo's in the print works scene).
The semi-autobiographical film reflects events of Truffaut's life.[7] In style, it references other French works—most notably a scene borrowed wholesale fromJean Vigo'sZéro de conduite.[8] Truffaut dedicated the film to the man who became his spiritual father,André Bazin, who died just as the film was about to be shot.[8]
Besides being a character study, the film is an exposé of the injustices of the treatment of juvenile offenders in France at the time.[9]
According to Annette Insdorf writing for the Criterion Collection, the film is "rooted in Truffaut's childhood."[7] This includes how both Antoine and Truffaut "found a substitute home in the movie theater" and both did not know their biological fathers.[7]
The English title is a literal translation of the French that fails to capture its meaning, as the French title refers to the idiom"faire les quatre cents coups", meaning "to raise hell".[10] On the first prints in the United States, subtitler and dubber Noelle Gillmor translated the title asWild Oats, but the distributor Zenith did not like that and reverted it toThe 400 Blows.[11]
Most ofThe 400 Blows was filmed in Paris:[12]
The exception was for scenes filmed at the reform school, which were filmed inHonfleur, a small coastal town in the northern French province ofNormandy. The final beach scene was filmed in Villers-sur-Mer, a few miles to the southwest.[13]
The film opened the1959 Cannes Film Festival and was widely acclaimed, winning numerous awards, including theBest Director Award at Cannes,[14] the Critics Award of the1959 New York Film Critics' Circle[15] and the Best European Film Award at 1960'sBodil Awards.[16] It was nominated forBest Original Screenplay at the32nd Academy Awards.[17] The film holds a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 71 reviews, with a weighted average of 9.4/10. The website's critical consensus states, "A seminal French New Wave film that offers an honest, sympathetic, and wholly heartbreaking observation of adolescence without trite nostalgia."[18]
The film is among the top 10 of theBritish Film Institute's list of 50 films that should be seen by age 15.[19]
| Year | Association | Category | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 | Cannes Film Festival | Palme d'Or | François Truffaut | Nominated | [14] |
| Best Director | François Truffaut | Won | |||
| OCIC Award | François Truffaut | Won | |||
| New York Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Foreign Language Film | The 400 Blows | Won | [15] | |
| Cahiers du cinéma | Annual Top 10 List | François Truffaut | 5th | [20] | |
| 1960 | Academy Awards | Best Original Screenplay | François Truffaut,Marcel Moussy | Nominated | [17] |
| Bodil Awards | Best European Film | The 400 Blows | Won | [16] | |
| French Syndicate of Cinema Critics | Best Film | The 400 Blows | Won | ||
| 1961 | BAFTA | Best Film from Any Source | François Truffaut | Nominated | [21] |
| Most Promising Newcomer | Jean-Pierre Léaud | Nominated | |||
| Sant Jordi Awards | Best Foreign Director | François Truffaut | Won | [16] |
Truffaut made four other films with Léaud depicting Antoine at later stages of his life:Antoine and Colette (which was Truffaut's contribution to the 1962 anthologyLove at Twenty),Stolen Kisses,Bed and Board, andLove on the Run.
FilmmakersAkira Kurosawa,Luis Buñuel,Satyajit Ray,Steven Spielberg,Jean Cocteau,Carl Theodor Dreyer,Richard Linklater,Tsai Ming Liang,Woody Allen,Richard Lester,P C Sreeram,Norman Jewison,Wes Anderson andNicolas Cage have citedThe 400 Blows as one of their favorite movies.[22][23] Kurosawa called it "one of the most beautiful films that I have ever seen".[24]
Martin Scorsese included it on a list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker."[25]
The film was ranked #29 inEmpire magazine's list of "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.[26] In 2018, the film was voted the eighth greatest foreign-language film of all time in BBC's poll of 209 critics in 43 countries.[27]
The festival poster for the71st Venice International Film Festival paid tribute to the film as it featured the character of Antoine Doinel portrayed by Jean-Pierre Léaud.[28][29]
