What Is The Individualist Movement In The 400 Blows

Francois Truffaut’s film, The 400 Blows, emerged as the initial force that began the French New Wave movement in cinema as well as revolutionized the cinematic landscape of France. The French New Wave movement was a movement that lasted from the late 1950s-early 1960s and was set during the country’s process of rebuilding its identity after World War 2. The movement consisted of the central conflict of challenging the traditional conventions of film-making from French filmmakers that preceded young French filmmakers through its depiction of themes of adolescence, rebellion, and social revolution. By rejecting the norms of the French film industry that was engulfed in the past, the movement encouraged individualistic approaches to film-making

Within that period, his mother was not enthusiastic to raise a child as she was 17 years old when she had him and his father was not his biological father. Inheriting the trope of an “unwanted child” with “[neglectful] parents”, encouraged Truffaut to pursue the art of cinema by the time he was an adolescent (Fabe 180). As a teenager, he was infamous for being a delinquent and being expelled from every school that he attended. Specifically, he was “so oppressed by school authorities” that he ran away from home and lived off of temporary jobs and theft (Fabe 180). Truffaut’s personal experiences along with his troubled childhood would later influence his filmmaking as a source of inspiration as he drew from these experiences to adapt a relatable approach to his earlier films. Before embarking on his career as a director, Truffaut was a film critic for the magazine, Cahiers du Cinéma, where he was also with a group of film critics and filmmakers that shared the same title as the magazine. The group Truffaut was involved in consisted of not only criticizing films but also concurrently sharing the same ambitious approach to filmmaking that would accentuate the director’s influence on creating a film and encouraging change within an art form that has remained stagnant for years prior. Working as a critic would also help him advance in analyzing films in depth and refine what it means to direct films. As a result of this development, Truffaut’s approach to criticizing films recurringly emphasized the role of the director. By “[enshrining] the directors” he critiqued, it helped to promote the auteur theory as well as further advance the filmmaking process for young French filmmakers (Andrew and Gillain