Summary
Antoine Doinel is a 12 year old boy who lives with his parents in a small apartment in
Paris. He creates trouble both at school and at home and feels unloved and unwanted
by his parents. He believes that he can solve his problems by playing truant and
running away with his friend, René. Finally, he commits one misdemeanour
too many and is sent away to an observation centre for juvenile delinquents.
Review
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 imbues 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 immortalise 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 along 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, leading
to nowhere but the open sea, are similarly very moving.
Decae’s photography and Truffaut’s script are very well complemented by Jean Constantin's
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 successful 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 of the French New Wave. It was and remains a popular
film all over the world, but especially in France. It is - simply - a masterpiece.
© James Travers 2002
See also:
The life of François Truffaut
Tirez sur le pianiste
Jules et Jim
Farenheit 451
Baisers volés
Le Dernier métro
Traduction
française
Buy films by François Truffaut
More about the French New Wave
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