The 400 Blows

After watching The 400 Blows, in French, Les Quatre Cent Coups, I can now see why many consider it one of the best French New Wave movies ever made. Although black and white, it only added to the film more. The fact that the language was French also made the film unique, as it wasn't in the typical English and sound we are used to hearing nowadays.

I really couldn't find one thing that I disliked about The 400 Blows, and that is not usual for me. Everything seemed to fall in line. The cast was great; sure, you could say the acting was a little melodramatic but then again, it is hard to find acting back in the day that isn't melodramatic. I thought that the director did an excellent job of taking this simple storyline of a child who misbehaves a lot and turning it into a grand movie. This is something we see a lot of today – children misbehaving, and we really never think anything of it. We just blow it off as one of those un-disciplined children, but The 400 Blows shows no discipline at its best. At the same time, though, the movie makes you feel sorry for the troublesome kid, encouraging you to almost egg him on to continue to do more bad stuff. That is where the movie suckered me in. While I knew that the boy was doing wrong and saw that side of the story, I wanted to see him succeed to see what was to gappen next, both in his crime and in his punishment. To be able to do that to a viewer takes a really well-focused film, and I think The 400 Blows fits into that category perfectly. Along with the above, I also shockingly enjoyed the film in French. I think it added to the effect the movie put across. I typically do not like to read subtitles, as I’d rather focus on the movie totally, but it was neat in this case.

A French New Wave movie is a movie in which the director expresses their thoughts, usually dealing with something happening in society at the current time, through the camera to put a thought in the mind of the viewer. There is no question that The 400 Blows falls under this category. After researching the movie because I found it interesting and wanted to learn a little more, I found that this was Francois Truffaut’s, the director, type of film autobiography. This movie was his expression of many events of his life. As well, this was the movie that not only opened up French New Wave cinema to the rest of society but actually fueled the era itself. I also found it pretty interesting that the title actually means raising hell as a French idiomatic expression.

If the movies we keep watching in this French New Wave unit continue to compare to The 400 Blows, I think I will truly like this set of movies. It’s through movies like these that my whole opinion on older movies takes a drastic turn and change.

-Kevin