The 400 Blows (DVD) / a film by Francois Truffaut

Life has not been kind to Antoine Doinel. A boy in his early teens, he's regularly singled out at school for poor performance and frequently punished for repeated instances of disruptive behavior. The unpleasantness is only compounded at home where his cold and austere mother constantly berates he and his father for perceived inadequacies. One day while he and school chum Rene play hookie, Antoine observes his mother clandestinely accompanied by another man, their intimate mannerisms confirming what could only mean an extramarital affair. In despair, a desultory Antoine's subsequent foray into further delinquency bears harsh consequences. Arrested for stealing a typewriter and trying to pawn it, he's tried as a felon and--with both parents' earnest approval--sentenced to a juvenile reform center and, from there, ultimately to a work camp for lost causes. As chronic escape attempts--and subsequent recapture--swiftly become his sole objective, Antoine adopts what will indelibly become his life's occupation--flight.

Arguably the film which sparked the French New Wave, Truffaut's masterpiece remains a timeless study of adolescent abandon and recklessness pitted against domestic instability and institutional ineffectiveness. Though "true and touching . . . and at times overwhelmingly sad"*, 400 Blows (1959) was one of the first films to realistically convey life as absurdly irrational and irredeemably tragic. This film and others similar to it, most notably those of Claude Chabrol and Jean Luc-Godard, introduced a new, innovative style of movies to the world. It was a brand of filmmaking absent of stereotypically cinematic devices such as fluid, clearly-cut scenes and unimprovised scripts; rather it was a form of art where self-expressionism and auteur theory (director as "author") were the dominant motifs. Essentially an autobiographic deconstruction of Truffaut's own youth, 400 Blows was the first film to feature Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine. Three successive sequels--Antoine and Collette, Stolen Kisses, & Bed and Board--would star Leaud, each chronicling Antoine's progression from adolescence into adulthood. (DVD FOUR)

*DVD & Video Guide. Mick Martin and Marsha Porter, ed. Ballantine, New York: 2006. p. 409.