 Starring: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Remy
Director: Francois Truffaut
Year Of Release: 1959
Plot: Antoine is in his early teens, living with a mother who doesn’t really seem to care much about him and he is always getting into trouble for things that aren’t really his fault, or at least don’t deserve the reaction they get. Poised on the edge of a life of petty crime, Antoine gets in trouble with the police, which leads him to a work camp by the sea. His options seem to have been stripped from him and it’s revealed that his life from birth is a story of neglect. All of which leads to one of the most famous closing shots in all of cinema. |
I suppose I should start by saying that generally I’m not a big fan of French New Wave cinema. While I can appreciate they were pushing new boundaries, much of the work of Godard and co. strikes me as too artificial and self conscious for my taste. However I do love Francois Truffaut’s 1959 movie, The 400 Blows. There’s an innocence and purity to it, where it accepts that it’s a film, but takes you into a world that seems honest, sad and poignant, yet full of vigour and with moments of great elation (possibly because it’s partially based on director Francois Truffaut’s own youth). It’s a truly wonderful movie, yet even a lot of dedicated film fans I know have never seen it, because they’ve been put off it by watching other, more annoying, New Wave films.
It’s also easy to underestimate the importance of The 400 Blows (or Les quatre cents coups, to give it its proper name). Although not the first New Wave film, it was the one that brought this new brand of French filmmaking to an international audience. While many have tried to define exactly what constitutes the New Wave style, I don’t really think there is one, other than a desire to push the boundaries, to completely reject the strictures of the classical filmmaking techniques, and the belief that a film ought to be the personal statement of a director (many of the early New Wave filmmakers were the same guys who had promoted the yet-to-be-named auteur theory in the journal, Cahiers Du Cinema).
The 400 Blows alerted the world to the fact that something interesting was going on in French film, and suddenly people were taking notice. It’s probably not surprising that up and coming directors in particular were in thrall to a type of filmmaking that said they were the most vital part of the process and the authors of a movie. However more important was that it freed the imagination of subsequent generations of directors both in terms of who you could make movies about and also how you could film those stories (for example some New Wave directors were fond of going out on the streets and filming ‘real’ stories in an almost improvisational style, which may seem unremarkable now, but was unheard of at the time). The New Wave threw the rulebook out the window and told filmmakers that all that was important was to find the best way for you to tell your story, instead of purely being beholden to the cinema of the past.
The New Wave informed the directors that overhauled Hollywood in the 70s, such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, and in a slightly different way, even the blockbuster directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Even today people like Quentin Tarantino site the French New Wave as a key influence, particularly on Pulp Fiction. Those modern directors who wouldn’t consciously think about it nevertheless owe a great debt to the New Wave and the way it helped free up directors to make movies in new and different ways (and eventually showed Hollywood that they could make more money this way). Truffaut and his brethren paved the way, and I can fully admit that, even while I still don’t like most of their films.
However I would also argue that this may not have happened if The 400 Blows hadn’t come so early in the New Wave process. If it hadn’t been for the heart and beauty of Truffaut’s film focussing the film world’s attention of what was happening in French cinema at the time, it’s easy to imagine that many of the later films by Chabrol, Rohmer, Resnais and the like might have been politely applauded and then forgotten. Blows may be more naive and stylistically simple than some of the later films, but it also showed that despite some New Wave movies being a bit too mannered, self conscious and, well, poncey, for their own good, what these filmmakers were exploring could allow you to tell commercial, heartfelt stories in new and freer ways, using cinema rather than hiding it and experimenting with how you can engage with an audience beyond a formal, classical filmmaking style.
The 400 Blows really is a vitally important movie, and it’s also an extremely good one. It’s just a shame so few people have seen it.
TIM ISAAC
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