Francois Truffaut's very first feature film after being a rather brutal film critic for a number of years.
Partly, even perhaps largely based on his troubled childhood experiences of growing up with indifferent parents, '400 Blows' is Truffaut's recollections of his delinquent life in Paris just after the war and how he fought against repressive authority (school, parents, police) to do his own thing. His actions ultimately lead him to an institution for criminal boys and his eventual escape.
I could go on and on about how this film almost single-handedly began the French New Wave movement, but that has been covered by just about everyone else, and far more eloquently than I could ever accomplish. But now that I mention it, the FNW did embolden so many American filmmakers who went on to create the New Hollywood in the late 60's and into the 70's.
Antoine Doinel, the main character, is not really a bad kid at all, he just can't be bothered following one idiotic rule after another and, with his parents more caught up with their own lives, he gradually descends further and further into petty crime.
What we are left with is a young man with too much time on his hands and too much temptation around him. Of course he's going to get into some kind of trouble and the heavy-handed powers that be seem determined to reform the wayward boy no matter what.
Compared to today's young louts and losers Antoine is almost angelic, so perhaps there is the sympathy we feel for him - he's an okay kid who is just getting lost in a stuffy system that doesn't have the resources to deal with his energy and individuality.
What comes across most powerfully is that Antoine is a real person with needs and feelings that society simply cannot recognise nor nourish. As a result, he drifts away and ends up in the institution, only to escape and eventually finding himself on the beach with whatever has drifted on the high seas and washed up there. He is a piece of flotsam himself, removed from society but still forever connected to it.
***** out of *****
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