[tps_title]2. The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)[/tps_title]
Arguably the defining film of the French New Wave (it preceded Breathless, after all), Truffaut’s portrait of a misunderstood boy who takes to petty theft when society all but fails him is one of the great masterpieces of the cinema, a haunting coming-of-age miniature that finds childhood, neglected and stymied by authority, held up indefinitely on an isolated seashore. Though it sounds somber, the film is brisk, kinetic, and imbued with enormous spirit, charged by the elegant and innovative camerawork of DP Henri Decaë. But it is Jean-Pierre Léaud, finally, who makes The 400 Blows ring with heartbreaking humanity. As Truffaut surrogate Antoine Doinel, he receives the film’s passionate diversions and dispiriting skirmishes with equal pathos, conveying the juvenile head-rush of an unsanctioned trip to the amusement park before staring into our souls, dispossessed and disempowered, begging us to feel his pain.
See also: Sister (2012), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), as well as Truffaut’s continuation of the Antoine Doinel journey in Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979)
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