FROM THE EYES OF A MASTER : CHILDHOOD "LES 400 COUPS"

Ok, I’m chugging on with our “old masters” tour and I cannot help but stop at this film. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You saw the name, maybe googled it or remembered it thought “François Truffaut? French New Wave? You have GOT to be joking!” The general prejudice about this genre of films is that in a word, they are unwatchable. I do not deny that some of them probably are, I haven’t gone “deep enough” into the genre to know. In later years especially, the New Wave cinema aimed, with the techniques it used, to make the audience think – as opposed to getting immersed in the film in a semi-hypnotic state, the way you would watch a film on a Friday night for instance… The spectators who missed the “immersion” labeled the genre as “terrible, arty-farty and depressing”. Well, each is entitled to his opinion. My immediate opinion however, is that if you set aside the classics of Hollywood style movies we are used to and get to thinking about the smaller things, the details of a film, we will find true gems here. Take this film, 400 blows. First in the series made by Truffaut chronicling the life of Antoine Doinel (imaginary hero needless to say) is one of the best, most touching and most sensitively composed films I have had the pleasure of watching…
Based largely on Truffaut’s own troubled years growing up, Antoine Doinel, aged around 10 I would say, has a tough life. At school, his teachers are harsh – and seem to not like him very much. At home his parents work too much, fight the rest of the time and pay very little attention to him, except that is, to tell him to do chores and scold him. His only ally in the whole affair is his best friend and classmate René, whose parents pay little or no attention to him leaving him to pretty much do as he pleases in their large house… After a series of misunderstandings on all fronts, Antoine decides he is through with school and that he must go out into the wide world and make his own way… For him and René, this decision of his will have unexpected results – to say the least…
On the back of my copy of this film, there is a quotation by Truffaut himself: “Except for adults with bad memories, being a teenager seldom has good memories.” I couldn’t help but smile, oh yes, childhood and youth as an “age of innocence” when all was rosy… Nostalgia is a brilliant way to escape from day to day problems; however, the “happy” memories are seldom as happy as we would have them be…
In the case of Antoine for example, his teacher is a typical petty high-school teacher who sees himself as the monarch/tyrant of a little kingdom (the classroom) and thus must have an “arch enemy” (in this case Antoine. His parents are far too wrapped up in their own lives to take notice of him; the unfortunate series of circumstances leading to this state are also revealed throughout the film. Antoine isn’t particularly bad or troubled by nature; it is in fact the 400 blows he receives from left and right that make him so. Throughout the film we see many attempts on Antoine’s part to escape. Not necessarily do anything else bad but to escape, from school where he is miserable, from his parents, his condition… Being 10 however, his options are limited and his motives largely misunderstood.
You will, I am pretty sure, find yourself thinking back on your own childhood as you watch this film. There are many intelligent and touching little details on school-life that will come flooding back to you and that are lovingly dwelt upon throughout the film whether they actually have a part in the central plot or not… No wonder Truffaut, aged 27 and just having directed his first motion picture, wiped the floor with the opposition at the Cannes film festival with this one back in the day. It is the film that established him as a master and you would have to be blind to not see why, whether you like his later work or not…