The 400 Blows (Les 400 coups) dvd, 99 minutes French with English subtitles
The title of this film can be read literally or, as in the French version, as an idiom meaning ‘running wild’.
It is a truly remarkable film both in its content and because of the time when it was produced – 1959.
The director, Francis Truffaut, was a young man with some contacts in the film industry but no experience of film making.
The story is semi-autobiographical which gives it added power.
It is the story of a young teenager, Antoine Doinel, running wild. He is an unruly boy living in Paris, deeply unhappy because of his barely functional family. His step-father cares little for him and, to make matters even worse, Antoine happens to overhear that his mother wished for an abortion but, in the event, was overruled by the grandmother. Antoine also catches his mother by chance embracing another man. Is it any wonder that Antoine feels unwanted, unloved and neglected ?
He often runs away from both home and school (even his teacher delights in humiliating him in front of the whole class). He plays with his school friends getting into all kinds of scrapes.
Eventually, (inevitably, one might say), he ends up in serious trouble with the law and is sent to the French equivalent of Borstal.
He manages to escape only to find the wide-open world before him.
The film ends there and one is left hanging with no finality – a quite deliberate finish to an unhappy tale.
It is a sad but terribly realistic story, superbly acted by a young actor, Jean-Pierre Leaud who, seemingly and quite naturally, lends stark credibility to this deeply moving film.
It is worth watching more than once if only to underline the Christian values of family life and what happens when those values are disregarded or ignored.