''The 400 Blows'' (french: Les Quatre Cents Coups) is a 1959 French
coming-of-age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can ...
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
film, and the directorial debut of
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...
. The film, shot in
DyaliScope, stars
Jean-Pierre Léaud
Jean-Pierre Léaud, ComM (; born 28 May 1944) is a French actor, known for playing Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut's series of films about that character, beginning with ''The 400 Blows'' (1959). He also worked several times with Jean-Luc God ...
,
Albert Rémy
Albert Rémy (9 April 1921 – 26 January 1967) was a French actor best known for his supporting roles in François Truffaut's first two feature films. He played Antoine Doinel's father in ''The 400 Blows'' and Charlie Koller's (Charles Aznavour ...
, and
Claire Maurier
Claire Maurier (born Odette-Michelle-Suzanne Agramon; March 27, 1929) is a French actress who has appeared in more than 90 films since 1947.
Life and career
Maurier was born Odette-Michelle-Suzanne Agramon on March 27, 1929 in the French commune ...
. One of the defining films of the
French New Wave
French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...
, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. Written by Truffaut and
Marcel Moussy Marcel Moussy (7 May 1924 – 10 August 1995) was a French screenwriter and television director.
Moussy was born in Algiers. He was co-nominated with François Truffaut for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film ''The ...
, the film is about
Antoine Doinel
Antoine Doinel () is a fictional character created by François Truffaut and portrayed by actor Jean-Pierre Léaud in five films directed by Truffaut. Doinel is to a great extent an alter ego for Truffaut; they share many of the same childhood ex ...
, a misunderstood adolescent in Paris who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior. Filmed on location in Paris and Honfleur, it is the first in a series of five films in which Léaud plays the semi-autobiographical character.
''The 400 Blows'' received numerous awards and nominations, including the
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
Award for Best Director, the OCIC Award, and a
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
nomination in 1959, and was also nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Awards, Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Be ...
in 1960. The film had 4.1 million admissions in France, making it Truffaut's most successful film in his home country.
''The 400 Blows'' is widely considered one of the
best French films in the history of cinema; in the 2012 ''
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'' critics' poll of
the greatest films ever made, it was ranked 39th. It ranked 13th in the directors' poll on the same list.
Plot
Antoine Doinel
Antoine Doinel () is a fictional character created by François Truffaut and portrayed by actor Jean-Pierre Léaud in five films directed by Truffaut. Doinel is to a great extent an alter ego for Truffaut; they share many of the same childhood ex ...
is a young boy growing up in Paris. Misunderstood by his parents for playing truant from school and stealing and tormented in school for discipline problems by his teacher (such as writing on the classroom wall, and later falsely explaining his absence as having been due to his mother's death), Antoine frequently runs away from both places. He finally quits school after his teacher accuses him of plagiarizing
Balzac. (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, having been unable to sell it, is apprehended while trying to return it.
The stepfather turns Antoine over to the 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 Antoine's biological father. Antoine is placed in an
observation center for troubled youths near the seashore (as his mother wished). A psychologist at the center probes reasons for Antoine's unhappiness, which the youth reveals in a fragmented series of monologues.
While playing football with the other boys one day, 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 an
optical effect
Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously ca ...
, zooms in on his face as he looks into the camera.
Cast
*
Jean-Pierre Léaud
Jean-Pierre Léaud, ComM (; born 28 May 1944) is a French actor, known for playing Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut's series of films about that character, beginning with ''The 400 Blows'' (1959). He also worked several times with Jean-Luc God ...
as
Antoine Doinel
Antoine Doinel () is a fictional character created by François Truffaut and portrayed by actor Jean-Pierre Léaud in five films directed by Truffaut. Doinel is to a great extent an alter ego for Truffaut; they share many of the same childhood ex ...
*
Albert Rémy
Albert Rémy (9 April 1921 – 26 January 1967) was a French actor best known for his supporting roles in François Truffaut's first two feature films. He played Antoine Doinel's father in ''The 400 Blows'' and Charlie Koller's (Charles Aznavour ...
as Julien Doinel, Antoine's stepfather
*
Claire Maurier
Claire Maurier (born Odette-Michelle-Suzanne Agramon; March 27, 1929) is a French actress who has appeared in more than 90 films since 1947.
Life and career
Maurier was born Odette-Michelle-Suzanne Agramon on March 27, 1929 in the French commune ...
as Gilberte Doinel, Antoine's mother
*
Guy Decomble as Sourpuss, School teacher
* Patrick Auffay as René Bigey, Antoine's best friend
*
Georges Flamant
Georges Flamant (1903–1990) was a French film actor.
Flamant came to attention for his role as a pimp in Jean Renoir's 1931 film ''La Chienne'' where he starred alongside Janie Marèse. He began a relationship with Marèse, but while driving on ...
as Monsieur Bigey, René's father
*
Pierre Repp
Pierre Repp (5 November 1909 in Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise, France – 1 November 1986 in Plessis-Trévise, France) was a French humorist and actor. His real name was Pierre Alphonse Léon Frédéric Bouclet. On 14 August 1930, he married Ferdinande ...
as an English teacher
* Daniel Couturier as Betrand Mauricet
*
Luc Andrieux
Luc Andrieux (1917–1977) was a French actor and assistant director.
Partial filmography
* ''The Queen's Necklace'' (1946) - Un geôlier (uncredited)
* ''Le Bataillon du ciel'' (1947)
* ''Les aventures des pieds nickeles'' (1948) - Hector
* ' ...
as Le professeur de gym
* Robert Beauvais as director of the school
* as Mme Bigey
* as L'inspecteur Cabanel
* as the examining magistrate
*
Jacques Monod
Jacques Lucien Monod (February 9, 1910 – May 31, 1976) was a French biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965, sharing it with François Jacob and André Lwoff "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of en ...
as commissioner
* Henri Virlojeux as the night watchman
*
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau (; 23 January 1928 – 31 July 2017) was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite. She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. Mo ...
as a woman looking for her dog
*
Jean-Claude Brialy
Jean-Claude Brialy (30 March 1933 – 30 May 2007) was a French actor and film director.
Early life
Brialy was born in Aumale (now Sour El-Ghozlane), French Algeria, where his father was stationed with the French Army. Brialy moved to mainland ...
as a man trying to pick up a woman
Truffaut also included a number of friends (fellow directors) in bit or background parts, including himself and
Philippe De Broca
Philippe de Broca (; 15 March 1933 – 26 November 2004) was a French movie director.
He directed 30 full-length feature films, including the highly successful ''That Man from Rio, That Man from Rio (''L'Homme de Rio'')'', ''Le Magnifique, The M ...
in the funfair scene;
Jacques Demy
Jacques Demy (; 5 June 1931 – 27 October 1990) was a French director, lyricist, and screenwriter. He appeared at the height of the French New Wave alongside contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Demy's films are celebrat ...
as a policeman;
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Franà ...
and
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
as overheard voices (Belmondo's in the print works scene).
Production
Title
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". On the first prints in the United States, subtitler and dubber Noelle Gillmor translated the title as ''Wild Oats'', but the distributor Zenith did not like that and reverted it to ''The 400 Blows.''
Themes
The semi-autobiographical film reflects events of Truffaut's life.
In style, it references other French works—most notably a scene borrowed wholesale from
Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo (; 26 April 1905 – 5 October 1934) was a French film director who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s. His work influenced French New Wave cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Biography
Vigo was born to Emil ...
's ''
Zéro de conduite
''Zero for Conduct'' (french: Zéro de conduite) is a 1933 French featurette directed by Jean Vigo. It was first shown on 7 April 1933 and was subsequently banned in France until November 1945.Temple (2011), p. 145.
The film draws extensively on ...
''.
Truffaut dedicated the film to the man who became his spiritual father,
André Bazin
André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.
Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine '' Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951, ...
, who died just as the film was about to be shot.
Besides being a character study, the film is an exposé of the injustices of the treatment of juvenile offenders in France at the time.
According to Annette Insdorf writing for the Criterion Collection, the film is "rooted in Truffaut’s childhood."
This includes how both Antoine and Truffaut "found a substitute home in the movie theater" and both did not know their biological fathers.
Filming locations
Most of ''The 400 Blows'' was filmed in Paris:
* Avenue Frochot,
Paris 9th
*
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower.
Locally nicknamed "'' ...
,
Champ de Mars
The Champ de Mars (; en, Field of Mars) is a large public greenspace in Paris, France, located in the seventh ''arrondissement'', between the Eiffel Tower to the northwest and the École Militaire to the southeast. The park is named after the ...
,
Paris 7th
*
Montmartre
Montmartre ( , ) is a large hill in Paris's northern 18th arrondissement. It is high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Right Bank. The historic district established by the City of Paris in 1995 is bordered by Rue Ca ...
,
Paris 18th
* Palais de Chaillot,
Trocadéro
The Trocadéro (), site of the Palais de Chaillot, is an area of Paris, France, in the 16th arrondissement, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. It is also the name of the 1878 palace which was demolished in 1937 to make way for the Palais ...
,
Paris 16th
*
Pigalle Pigalle may refer to:
Places
;Paris, France
*Quartier Pigalle, an area in Paris around the Place Pigalle, on the border between the 9th and the 18th arrondissements
*Place Pigalle, public square in the Quartier Pigalle at the foot of the Montmartre ...
,
Paris 9th
* Rue Fontaine
*
Sacré Cœur,
Paris 18th
The exception was the closing reform school part, filmed in
Honfleur
Honfleur () is a commune in the Calvados department in northwestern France. It is located on the southern bank of the estuary of the Seine across from le Havre and very close to the exit of the Pont de Normandie. The people that inhabit Honf ...
, a small coastal town in the northern French province of
Normandy
Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...
.
Reception
The film opened the
1959 Cannes Film Festival
The 12th Cannes Film Festival was held from 30 April to 15 May 1959. The Palme d'Or went to the ''Orfeu Negro'' by Marcel Camus. The festival opened with '' Les Quatre Cents Coups'', directed by François Truffaut and closed with ''The Diary of An ...
and was widely acclaimed, winning numerous awards, including the
Best Director Award at Cannes,
the Critics Award of the
1959 New York Film Critics' Circle and the Best European Film Award at 1960's
Bodil Awards
The Bodil Awards are the major Danish film awards given by the Danish Film Critics Association. The awards are presented annually at a ceremony in Copenhagen. Established in 1948, it is one of the oldest film awards in Europe. The awards are given ...
.
It was nominated for
Best Original Screenplay
The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Beginning with the ...
at the
32nd Academy Awards
The 32nd Academy Awards ceremony was held on April 4, 1960 at the RKO Pantages Theatre, to honor the films of 1959.
William Wyler's Bible epic '' Ben-Hur'' won 11 Oscars, breaking the record of nine set the previous year by '' Gigi''. This t ...
.
The film holds a 99% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 65 reviews, with a weighted average of 9.3/10. 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."
The film is among the top 10 of the
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
's list of 50 films that should be seen by age 15.
Awards and nominations
Legacy
Truffaut made four other films with Léaud depicting Antoine at later stages of his life: ''
Antoine and Colette
''Antoine and Colette'' (french: Antoine et Colette) is a 1962 French short film written and directed by François Truffaut. It is the second installment in Truffaut's five-film series about Antoine Doinel, the character he follows from boyhood t ...
'' (which was Truffaut's contribution to the 1962 anthology ''Love at Twenty''), ''
Stolen Kisses
''Stolen Kisses'' (french: Baisers volés) is a 1968 French romantic comedy-drama film directed by François Truffaut, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Delphine Seyrig and Claude Jade. It continues the story of the character Antoine Doinel, whom Tr ...
'', ''
Bed and Board'', and ''
Love on the Run''.
Filmmakers
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
,
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and m ...
,
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs of fil ...
,
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American director, writer, and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spie ...
,
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...
,
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer (; 3 February 1889 – 20 March 1968), commonly known as Carl Th. Dreyer, was a Danish film director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his movies are noted for their emotional aus ...
,
Richard Linklater
Richard Stuart Linklater (; born July 30, 1960) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for films that revolve mainly around suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies '' ...
,
Tsai Ming Liang
Tsai Ming-liang (; born 27 October 1957) is a Malaysian-Taiwanese filmmaker. Tsai has written and directed 11 feature films, many short films, and television films. He is one of the most celebrated "Second New Wave" film directors of Taiwanese ...
,
Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...
,
Richard Lester
Richard Lester Liebman (born January 19, 1932) is an American retired film director based in the United Kingdom.
He is best known for directing the Beatles' films '' A Hard Day's Night'' (1964) and ''Help!'' (1965), and the superhero films ''S ...
,
P C Sreeram
P. C. Sreeram ISC (born 26 January 1956) is an Indian cinematographer and film director who works in Indian films. He is also the president of Qube Cinemas, a digital cinema technology company. He is an alumnus of the Madras Film Institute. Ap ...
,
Norman Jewison
Norman Frederick Jewison (born July 21, 1926) is a retired Canadian film and television director, producer, and founder of the Canadian Film Centre.
He has directed numerous feature films and has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best D ...
,
Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American filmmaker. His films are known for their eccentricity and unique visual and narrative styles. They often contain themes of grief, loss of innocence, and dysfunctional families. Cited by so ...
and
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Kim Coppola (born January 7, 1964), known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor and film producer. Born into the Coppola family, he is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Gu ...
have cited ''The 400 Blows'' as one of their favorite movies. Kurosawa called it "one of the most beautiful films that I have ever seen".
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominatio ...
included it on a list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker."
The film was ranked #29 in ''Empire'' magazine's list of "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. 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.
The festival poster for the
71st Venice International Film Festival paid tribute to the film as it featured the character of Antoine Doinel portrayed by Jean-Pierre Léaud.
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
*
*
*
*
''The 400 Blows'' on NewWaveFilm.com''The 400 Blows: Close to Home''an essay by
Annette Insdorf
Annette Insdorf (born c. 1950) is an American film historian, author and interviewer, who currently serves as host of ''Reel Pieces''.
Career
Born in Paris to Polish Holocaust survivors, the family moved to New York when she was 3 and a half. ...
at the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
''The 400 Blows: Reviewby Roger Ebert
{{DEFAULTSORT:400 Blows
1950s coming-of-age drama films
1959 directorial debut films
1959 drama films
1959 films
Antoine Doinel
Cultural depictions of Honoré de Balzac
Films about juvenile delinquency
Films about runaways
Films directed by François Truffaut
Films set in Paris
Films set in schools
Films shot in Paris
Films with screenplays by François Truffaut
French black-and-white films
French coming-of-age drama films
1950s French-language films
1950s French films