One of the best-loved and most memorable of all French films, Les quatre cents coups established François Truffaut as a great film director and launched the acting career of Jean-Pierre Léaud.
This is a poignant story about the life of a young teenage boy who seeks escape from his loveless, lonely existence by committing minor crimes and creating fantasies. We now know that the film is a semi-biographical account of Truffaut's own troubled childhood. He too lived with an adoptive father and a mother who resented having a child. (Truffaut himself was born in secrecy, to avoid the scandal of a birth outside of wedlock, and parcelled off to his grandmother for the early years of his life). Indeed it is difficult to see where the autobiography ends and the fiction begins - a characteristic which is noticeable in virtually all of Truffaut's subsequent films. It is probably Truffaut's intimacy with the subject of his films that imbue them with such warmth and humanity and guarantee their emotional impact.
Jean-Pierre Léaud was cast by Truffaut himself, having advertised the role. There is an uncanny similarity between the two men, both physically and in their mannerisms. Léaud became Truffaut's friend and protégé for a substantial part of their careers, with Truffaut reusing the character of Antoine in a series of films spanning 20 years. Indeed it is difficult to watch Léaud without seeing something of Truffaut in his performance. In Les quatre cents coups, Léaud plays the part of the unhappy teenage boy à la perfection. His futile attempts to please his parents, his empty fantasies, his loneliness when he takes to the streets of Paris - glimpses of a broken childhood that immortalises the young Antoine as possibly one of the most sympathetic figure in French cinema history.
Henri Decae's black and white photography appears the perfect medium for Truffaut's wistful tale. Location filming is used extensively, creating an impression of expanse and freedom which depicts what the young Antoine is looking for but which is constantly denied him. The scenes when the young boy is ultimately confined in a police van being driven the night streets of Paris have a deeply tragic poignancy. The final shots, with Antoine apparently finding his freedom on a vast expanse of beach, but leading no where but to the open sea, are similarly very moving.
Decae's photography and Truffaut's script are very well complemented by Jean Constantin engaging musical score, having a child-like simplicity that seems to underline the futility of Antoine's aspirations for a better life.
Les quatre cents coups was instantly successfully when it was released in 1959, winning Truffaut the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. It was one of the first and most influential films in the New Wave of French films. It was and remains a popular film all over the world, but especially in France. It is - simply - a masterpiece.
This is a poignant story about the life of a young teenage boy who seeks escape from his loveless, lonely existence by committing minor crimes and creating fantasies. We now know that the film is a semi-biographical account of Truffaut's own troubled childhood. He too lived with an adoptive father and a mother who resented having a child. (Truffaut himself was born in secrecy, to avoid the scandal of a birth outside of wedlock, and parcelled off to his grandmother for the early years of his life). Indeed it is difficult to see where the autobiography ends and the fiction begins - a characteristic which is noticeable in virtually all of Truffaut's subsequent films. It is probably Truffaut's intimacy with the subject of his films that imbue them with such warmth and humanity and guarantee their emotional impact.
Jean-Pierre Léaud was cast by Truffaut himself, having advertised the role. There is an uncanny similarity between the two men, both physically and in their mannerisms. Léaud became Truffaut's friend and protégé for a substantial part of their careers, with Truffaut reusing the character of Antoine in a series of films spanning 20 years. Indeed it is difficult to watch Léaud without seeing something of Truffaut in his performance. In Les quatre cents coups, Léaud plays the part of the unhappy teenage boy à la perfection. His futile attempts to please his parents, his empty fantasies, his loneliness when he takes to the streets of Paris - glimpses of a broken childhood that immortalises the young Antoine as possibly one of the most sympathetic figure in French cinema history.
Henri Decae's black and white photography appears the perfect medium for Truffaut's wistful tale. Location filming is used extensively, creating an impression of expanse and freedom which depicts what the young Antoine is looking for but which is constantly denied him. The scenes when the young boy is ultimately confined in a police van being driven the night streets of Paris have a deeply tragic poignancy. The final shots, with Antoine apparently finding his freedom on a vast expanse of beach, but leading no where but to the open sea, are similarly very moving.
Decae's photography and Truffaut's script are very well complemented by Jean Constantin engaging musical score, having a child-like simplicity that seems to underline the futility of Antoine's aspirations for a better life.
Les quatre cents coups was instantly successfully when it was released in 1959, winning Truffaut the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. It was one of the first and most influential films in the New Wave of French films. It was and remains a popular film all over the world, but especially in France. It is - simply - a masterpiece.