In Francois Truffaut’s heartfelt 1959 film The 400 Blows, Antione Doinel is an adolescent boy in a spot of trouble. Although most of his problems aren’t his own, he is a misunderstood kid who isn’t quite sure how to externalize his feelings. A series of unfortunate and events transpire over the course of the film, but Truffaut isn’t really concerned with that. Instead, just like Antione himself, the film is shy and indirect about what it wants the viewer to perceive within its framed images. The camera embodies a childlike wonder and captivation on the most unusual details. By bringing us into the life and mind of this unsettled boy, Truffaut is capturing the essence of innocent, adventurous young minds being brought up in a cold and confining modern environment. In a house with paper-thin walls filled with negligence and untamed egos tearing about, one person’s problem soon become’s the whole family’s problem, and Antione is left no choice but to go along with a fate that he never asked for. As he achieves escape and turns to look at the audience with desperate eyes, the only question to be asked is, “Where do we go from here?”
The film’s opening credits have a very unique effect on the viewer. The hand-held camera riding along with the car is indicative of a first-person perspective, a view of the city from street level. It immediately gives a sense of place, and grounds the viewer in this world as it travels by them at speed. At the same time, the camera never focuses on any one scene with much clarity, so although we know we are in Paris, France, it is a distorted view that creates an uneasy feeling, almost like being lost in the city, in the world. The silhouette and shadow of the Eiffel Tower is overwhelming and gives a sense of foreboding. This imagery, combined with the unsettling soundtrack, does a lot to lend the film a melancholy feeling.
The soundtrack is something that immediately stood out to me once the film began, and it remained a notable constant throughout the film’s duration. Truffaut’s choice of music is very effective, but it embodies so many emotions in a simple progression of chords. It starts off light and lilting, like a playful music box. But, interspersed within this seemingly joyful soundscape, there are brief moments of discordant clarity which is jarring to the viewer and brings them back into the real world, away from that sense of wonder that the city provides. This could be representative of Antione’s plight over the course of the film, a reflection of his natural childhood innocence at odds with the uncaring cruelty of the adult world.
The film begins in the classroom of a boy’s school in Paris, France. They are passing around a racy pin-up of a woman behind the teacher’s back. This shows right off the bat that the children of this film are not interested in the realities of the world, but in the playful pretend that they must participate in outside the peripheral view of authoritative eyes. The opening scenes of Antione’s punishment are intended to show that he is in constant conflict with authority. The classroom represents the system of rules, a sense of order and control. Antione obviously does not fit well into this type of environment. The other boys are just as bad, but he has the unfortunate circumstance of getting caught.
At home, the audience sees that Antione spends a lot of time by himself, as both of his parents aren’t home quite a bit of the time. He makes a characterizing gesture in this scene, where he turns to the curtains in the window and wipes his dirty hands on them. He then turns to the mantle and steals money from underneath it. Antione, it seems, is a smart boy after all, just not in the way that society seems to expect or appreciate from him. Life in this dingy apartment has him in a constant state of rebellion, whether he intends for it to be seen that way or not. He just wants to enjoy the pleasures that his world offers, no matter the cost.
A striking scene in particular is when Antione is in the spinning room. The dizzying scene works well to capture Antione’s place in the world, as he spins ceaselessly around, losing the definition of faces in the world around him as he spirals out of control. The scene itself is innocent enough on its own, but in the larger context of the film, it lends a decidedly uneasy feeling to what should be just a good time.
Another interesting scene is one where Antione shows up in school after a leave of absence, and lies about his mother’s death in order to gain the sympathy of his overbearing teacher. It works for a little while, but it isn’t long before he finds himself being punished again, and physically slapped by his father for his misdeeds. The interesting thing about this scene is that Antione barely hesitates before lying. It shows just how out of touch he is, and how little he cares for his life at home. Perhaps it could be taken as Antione feeling that his idea of his mother might as well be as good as dead, anyway. This, in contrast to the scene where Antione and his family all run out to the movies, is very natural and disturbing at the same time. They all have their own worries and issues, but they cast them aside for a night on the town. They go to see a movie, the ultimate form of escapism for people at the time. By the time they return home, everything seems to be all right. This scene seems very out of place, though believable at the same time. Everyone seeks escape now and then, though it does little to solve anything. And this particular instance is no different in that regard.
Lastly, there are three striking shots that I want to mention. The first is the scene is with the crowd of children watching the puppet show. This scene implies a similar sense of escapism, but it instead externalizes the emotions on the children’s faces. Their expressions are very impacting, showing a full range of emotions from fear, to sadness, to delight as the story played itself out. It really captures that feeling of innocence that all children have. The second shot is after Antione is jailed. There is a brief, slow dolly shot rounding the corner of a hallway and peering down at the menacing backlit frame of the prison guard. From the height of this shot, it can be assumed that this is Antione’s view, or that of a child in over his head in the adult world. The final shot is after Antione escapes detention camp, and the camera follows alongside him as he runs for seemingly miles and miles to the beach. Unlike much of the film, this scene has no music laid over it. The only audio to be heard in this scene is that of the ambient nature of the farmland, the sounds of shoes on pavement, and Antione’s breathing as he flees for his life.
The final shot on the beach in representative of the film’s entire motif. Antione is a child out of place in the world. All he wants to do is escape, and once he achieves that goal, there is nowhere left for him to turn, except to the camera with his desperate, longing eyes.
Dino-Score: 4/5
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