Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4226 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-09-25
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Synopsis
Director Francois Truffaut's first feature film, The 400 Blows, is a landmark in French cinema. Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is a 13-year-old boy who can't seem to do anything right. His parents yell at him and then bribe him for his love and his promises to work harder in school. Meanwhile, his schoolteacher is out to get him and blames Antoine for everything--turning him into the class clown. As a result, Antoine runs away from school and his difficult family, living on the streets of Paris and committing petty crimes. While his life on the street is tough, it's much better than dealing with his preoccupied parents and his accusatory teacher. Nonetheless, things only go downhill for Antoine, descending to a simultaneously painful and beautiful conclusion.

A truly impressive film, The 400 Blows is raw, honest, and intensely emotional. Imbued with a strong and complex personality, Antoine maintains his poise and self-confidence, even as he endures abusive treatment from every adult he encounters. Rene Simonet (Patrick Auffray) is Antoine's one pal, and the unspoken dialogues between the boys, depicted by Truffaut through the boys' facial expressions and with masterful roving photography, allow the viewer to see through Antoine's eyes and understand his unflinching tenacity. Few films have captured the difficulties of childhood as well as this acclaimed French masterpiece. Essentially the start of the French New Wave movement, The 400 Blows is also the beginning of Truffaut's Antoine Doinel cycle, which follows Leaud as Antoine in four additional films over the course of 20 years.

Customer Reviews

Glorious film - but with burned in subtitles
The film is one of the glories of World Cinema, but this welcome disc is only worth buying if it is going cheap and you don't have the Criterion release. The picture quality isn't immaculate but it is nicely widescreen. However, it is a major flaw that the subtitles are burned in. i.e. they are not removable. This is doubly annoying because the Parisian French is translated into very vulgar Americanism, for example 'you' is translated as 'ya'.
The extras are worth having particularly the commentary which is by the original fellow on whom Truffaut based the character of the friend who 'draws on his inheritance'. It's a beautiful commentary but it is included on the Criterion (which also has another commentary).

Truffaut's first film - perhaps his best.
This largely autobiographical film, hauntingly shot in black and white, is set in austere post-war Paris, and tells of the early life of 14 year old Antoine Doinel, who lives with his atrractive, dominant mother and weak father in a tiny flat. He is openly despised by his autocratic teachers and his existence is an irritation to his mother.

Trauffaut captures the anarchic, free spirit of childhood but eventually the harsh reality of the adult world restricts and curtails all his freedoms but not to the point of extinction. The final, enigmatic freeze- frame poses questions to which, perhaps, even Trauffaut didn't have all the answers. A beautifully crafted masterpiece tinged with gentle humour.

Truffaut's third best film
Truffaut's 1959 film "Les 400 Coups" is probably best viewed as the first in the series that continued thru "Baisers volés" (1968) "Domicile Conjugal" (1970) and "L'amour en fuite" (1979). All of which show the life and lives of central character Antoine Doinel as he makes his way haphazardly through his days, from primary school, to army, to private detective to corporate employee and beyond.

Is it the best in the series? I don't think it is, but it's a very strong starting point: Truffaut's 1950s Paris is filmed exceptionally well. The acting is never less than great, and the film is unquestionably a classic.

Subtitles = fail. Sloppy translation and miss too much of the dialogue, even though the film isn't what you'd call dialogue-heavy.