Francoise Truffaut The 400 Blows Analysis

Francoise Truffaut’s 1959 film The 400 Blows (Les Quatre cents coups) was the

first French New Wave film, as well an an incredibly sentimental autobiographical piece

for the director as he reflected on his childhood in Paris in the 1930’s and 40’s. Truffaut

involved and evolved the camera-stylo (camera-as- pen) as he recounted his childhood and

early teen years. By using the camera and editing as a tool, he directed one of films

greatest masterpieces and started a new movement in cinema that revolutionized the

medium, The French New Wave.

Truffaut and the leading character, Antoine Doinel, are very similar. Truffaut

himself was born in Paris in 1932, but didn’t spend time with his parents until he was

eight years old, after his grandmother,

As the camera cuts, the

Eiffel Tower gets larger as the audience draws nearer to it. Eventually the camera leads

the audience below the Tower, drifting beneath with the same car passenger feeling, and

then away. The opening credits cover the screen as the Tower gets smaller and smaller in

the frame, covered by the naked trees that line the street. This sequence captures the real

beauty of Paris. No people are shown, just the buildings and architecture that surround the

Eiffel Tower. The buildings sometimes blur together from the speed, but the Tower

always stands in focus. This sequence can be related to and prefacing Antoine’s own

struggle to be seen as he is. The audience sees him as a good person that gets caught in

bad situation after bad situation. He’s never the worst person in any situation he finds

himself in trouble for, but he’s always the worst one off. In the first scene, he’s caught

with a magazine that has been passed around the classroom. He wasn’t the boy who

brought it in, nor was he interested in keeping it. But the teacher saw him with it,