THE 400 BLOWS (1959)
Principal Crew:
Screenplay: Francois Truffaut
Dialogue: Marcel Moussy
Direction: Francois Truffaut
Cinematography: Henri Decae
Music: Jean Constantin
Editor: Marie-Josephe Yoyotte
Principal Cast:
Antoine Doinel: Jean-Pierre Leaud
Claire Maurier: The Mother
Albert Remy: The Stepfather
Patrick Auffay: Rene
Guy Decomble: The Teacher
 UNIFYING CONCERN

The 400 Blows (1959) (Also Means - Too Raise Hell), Francois Truffaut

What is the film about?

Theme Or Unifying Concern
It may be seen as merely a growing up film or about the loss of innocence.
But primarily it is about a thirteen year old middle class boy’s struggle for
freedom and understanding and its tragic consequences. In other words, the
need for liberty, equality & fraternity we begin to feel strongly when we
approach our teens.
 UNIFYING CONCERN: THE CRISIS OF ADOLESCENCE

Speaking on the film Truffaut says, “I made my film on the crisis that specialists
call by the nice name of “juvenile identity crisis,” which shows up in the form of
four basic disturbances: the onset of puberty, an emotional weaning on the part
of the parents, a desire for independence, and an inferiority complex. Each one of
these four factors leads to revolt and the discovery that a certain sort of injustice
exists.” Truffaut’s point is that Antoine’s behavior at his age is not unlike that of
any one at that awkward stage but the society “raises hell” in condemning him
for behaving the way people do at that age.
 ANALYSIS

NARRATIVE SYSTEM

PATTERNS IN THE NARRATIVE

SIMILARITY & REPETITION

DIFFERENCE & VARIATION

DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESSION

UNITY VS SYSTEMATIC DISUNITY

CLASSICAL ANTI-CLASSICAL OR MODERNIST

 SIMILARITY & REPETITION

Despite Their Different Class Background, Antoine & Rene, both teenagers or
adolescents are alike. Both of them attempt to escape from their unremarkable
lives with their mischievousness and ingenuity. Both their parents are alike in
the way they relate to the children. Only difference is that they belong to
different classes. Their parents are more preoccupied with their own worlds
than their children. The only thing that worries them about their children is
their conduct. Another parallel is the boy who is brought back to the reform
home after he has escaped.
 DIFFERENCE & VARIATION

Both of Antoine and Rene steal money from their parents.

 DIFFERENCE & VARIATION

But in the typewriter episode while Antoine gets caught Rene escapes
 DIFFERENCE & VARIATION

The fellow classmate who squeals on them provides a significant contrast, a young
boy who pretentiously confirms to the values of an alienating world.
 SIMILARITY

There is an existential bind and kindness between Rene and Antoine. Rene takes
the trouble to visit him at the reform house.
 DIFFERENCE & VARIATION

There is one little sequence, however, that brings out this yearning for love on
Antoine’s part. The sequence where the mother gives him a bath and convinces
the father to take them for a movie. What undercuts this gesture is that more
than being an expression of love on the mother’s part it comes as a bribe she is
offering Antoine so that he may not speak about what he saw on the streets to his
father.
 DIFFERENCE & VARIATION

When Antoine is put in a cage in the police station, the narrative juxtaposes a
sequence of children watching a puppet show on the story of Red Riding Hood.
While emphasizing the similarity of Antoine’s innocence with that of the other
children; at the same time it also provides a deep contrast to his present situation
and perhaps wonders if some of them are going to share Antoine’s fate as they
grow up. In this way the film moves from the particular to the general.
 DEVELOPMENT & PROGRESSION

The conflict or difference between Antoine’s desire for freedom and the distant
and unconcerned adult authoritarian world develops into a series of escapades.
Initially with Rene he skips class, then he does not return home sleeping in the
printing press, and after this when he decides to quit home forever he stays
with Rene, until he gets caught in the typewriter episode.
 DEVELOPMENT & PROGRESSION

He spends an evening in a police station and a night at a remand home before

he is sent to the Juvenile Delinquency Institution. His mother tells him they are
going to send him to another reform institution, some kind of a rigorous labour
camp where he will be taught how to work. Finally we come to his great escape
where he reaches literally the crossroads with dead ends, “unable to keep
running away and looking back at a familiar hopeless fate.”
 UNITY OF NARRATIVE ELEMENTS?

with this progression the narrative tightly unifies everything but leaves the
ending or the closure deliberately loose in order to suggest an ambiguous
reality extending beyond the story. At the same time it is also an abrupt
closure. In that it moves away from classical unity. it is clearly modernist in
construction. In spite of the desire for freedom, the central character is not
motivated to achieve a singular goal within a visible deadline.
 ANALYSIS

STYLISTIC SYSTEM

PATTERNED & SIGNIFICANT USE OF TECHNIQUES:

MISE-EN-SCENE

CINEMATOGRAPHY

EDITING

SOUND

PARTICULAR FILM’S STYLE

GROUP STYLE FILMMAKER’S STYLE

 MISE-EN-SCENE: 1. SETTING

The Predominant Setting is the City, primarily its streets. Among other
spaces; we encounter, Lived spaces: Antoine’s House, His Bed Room, Rene’s
House & His Bed Room, Studying spaces: Class Room, School Yard; Working
Spaces: Step Father’s Office & Printing Press; Spaces of Leisure: Movie
Theatre & Amusement Park; Spaces that contain Penal Systems: Police
Station, Remand Home, Reform Institution; and eventually the wide open
sea.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 1. SETTING

The similarity & repetition which binds these different settings is the fact that
while Antoine is trying to escape, he is moving or progressing from one cage to
another cage. Even the sea shore at the end appears as a large cage beyond
which he cannot go. This is a parallelism in terms of setting suggesting at the
same time his momentary freedom.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 1. SETTING

In contrast (difference & variation) the only spaces of freedom are the streets of
Paris, even for the mother who steals a kiss from her boss. The amusement park
to some extent seems to offer a similar freedom. The movie theatre is another
instance of contrast.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 2. ACTIVE PROPS

The Harriet Anderson photograph Antoine and Rene steal from a theatre. It is
what gets him into trouble in the classroom. The Balzac book, the stuffed horse
in Rene’s house, the vase in which his mother hides the key of the money box,
their school bags, pea shooting pipes, the time piece in Rene’s house, the
squealer’s bicycle riding goggles, tobacco and paper, and last but not the least,
the school bags. In the beginning we see Antoine with a school bag. He is just
like any other middle class kid. In the end he is without the bag & out of school
briefly escaping from a reform home. The pad on which his finger prints are
taken become significant in this context. He is branded like an animal.
 ACTIVE PROPS & THEIR FUNCTION

There is hardly any narratively unmotivated element in the film. Everything has a
function or a purpose whatever the aspect we choose to focus on. Some things
have more than one function. For instance, the book of Balzac. Firstly, it reveals
that Antoine is not merely reading it in order to go to sleep and that he is really
not as underachieving as his teacher or parents think him to be for there is a great
deal of creative spark him. Secondly, in his over enthusiasm for his idol, he burns
his cupboard provoking the wrath of his stepfather.
 ACTIVE PROPS & THEIR FUNCTION

Thirdly, his teacher misunderstands his fascination with Balzac as plagiarism,

gives him a zero and kicks him out of class so that now he decides to leave home
forever.
 ACTIVE PROPS & THEIR FUNCTION

The Stuffed Horse in Rene’s house beyond the fact that it indicates the
cluttered atmosphere of his room stands for the degenerate aristocratic
imitation by his upper middle class bourgeois parents. It equates Rene to
another possession of this kind.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 3. COSTUMES

In almost every scene Antoine wears black to set him off the monotonous gray
background except when he goes to bed in his house or when he is given a bath
by his mother. This use of the costume is in consonance with his character and
his situation. Most of the others are in gray / white except the cops who are again
necessarily in black.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 4. LIGHTING

The day exteriors are mostly shot under overcast conditions providing contrast
mostly through the use of costume, or when Antoine is seen reflected in the water.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 4. LIGHTING

The night exteriors in contrast produce images with contrast..It increases the
moment he enters the police station. The high contrast continues when he
reaches the remand home and is greeted by a policeman in near silhouette.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 4. LIGHTING

The night interiors also increase in contrast at his house and

reaches its climax when he by mistake burns the shelf while trying
honor his hero Balzac by lighting a candle, an event that stands out
as an ominous sign.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 5. FIGURE EXPRESSION & MOVEMENT

The acting style is not melodramatic. Its naturalistic thrust keeps everything in
balance without losing spontaneity. Even when Antoine is in tears his subdued
expression is enhanced by the mise-en-scene. Truffaut worked with a loose
framework giving Jean Pierre Laud plenty of opportunities to improvise so that
he could “instinctively find the right gestures.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 5. FIGURE EXPRESSION & MOVEMENT

Keeping in Renoir's spirit, Truffaut learned the lesson of valuing the actor over the
character in a given film, and consequently, Lauds' own personal characteristics and
dialogue took over rather than strictly adhering to the script. Stolen Kisses (1968) in
this context was the crucial film.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 5. FIGURE EXPRESSION & MOVEMENT

When it comes to figure movement, whenever Antoine is in the streets there is a

certain playfulness and flamboyance except when carrying the typewriter. The
incident with the gym master in the streets brings out this playfulness more
emphatically. In contrast at home and school his body language is more of some
one who wishes to break out. There is this oscillation through out the film from
moments of imprisonment to moments of freedom.
 MISE-EN-SCENE: 5. FIGURE EXPRESSION & MOVEMENT

His run at the end of the film is the most expressive of that freedom. Finally,
when he turns towards the camera, the distancing effect of this sudden and
surprising gesture (since he has no one else to look at) does not invoke our
sympathy but provokes our understanding and thought as we see in him a part of
ourselves. In ‘breaking the fourth wall’, the film again moves beyond the
particular to the general, or from the individual to collective experience in this
case. This is clearly a gesture motivated by style rather than the narrative.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM:
ASPECT RATIO & SHOT SCALES

In general as far as the scale or volume of the image is concerned, medium, long
and extreme long shots dominate the film. Only rarely the camera frames a
single person in the kind of volume we see above. But this again is something
that suggests a medium shot in terms of scale rather than a proper medium close
up, because of its widescreen format.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM:
ASPECT RATIO & SHOT SCALES

Another illustrative example which goes to tell why Truffaut went in for the
special anamorphic lens. Truffaut wanted to make the film as cheaply as
possible. The choice of a special lens was therefore deliberate. It had
several advantages. Firstly it actually saved money since it enabled him to
shoot fewer, but longer sequences.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM:
ASPECT RATIO & SHOT SCALES

The big close up is saved for the final frame in the last image of the film. The
wide expanse of the background becomes possible because of the aspect ratio.
This is the moment in which the audience is brought so close to the central
character but the fact that he stares right into camera signifies a movement
self reflexivity along with the following freeze, calls attention to the cinematic
frame and the way it operates thereby deliberately violating the conventions of
the invisible style of Hollywood.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM: FRAMING

The framings contribute to the overall visual metaphor of confinement and

isolation. The framing of Antoine behind door ways, cross bars and fences
underline the fact that Anotoine’s young spirit is gradually trapped like an
animal in a cage leading to his final isolation.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM

In this shot he is framed by the two cops on either side.

 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM: ANGLING

In the city, right from his introduction we see Antoine photographed mostly
from top angle sandwiched between larger structures. In the classroom also
given the relation with the teacher and where that man is seated or standing we
again glimpse Antoine slightly from the top.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM: ANGLING

Even as we see him from a low angle when he is taken away in the police van or
in the cage at the police station, the compositions render the bars with more
dominance. We see the shot above when he is desperately trying to reach out to
Rene when he has come to visit him at his reform institution. Despite, the low
angle camera Antoine does not appear dominant or larger than life because of
this framing motif.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM:
LENSING

There some instances in the film when a telephoto lens has been used, mainly to
isolate a detail as in the shot above. Here in this image, two things are necessary.
One to point out that Antoine’s mother is stealing a kiss and the other to indicate
that she has recognized that Antoine has seen her do it. And this has to be filmed
without intruding upon other characters in the street. The telephoto lens becomes
an ideal device for such operations.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM:
LENSING

Another significant instance is when the children are shown watching the Red Riding
Hood puppet show. If the camera had used normal or wide angles lenses it would
have had to be much closer to its subjects. The use of the telephoto lens helps to
pick shots of various children without disturbing their spontaneous responses and
reactions.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM:
COMPOSITION

Classic vanishing point shots are rare in comparison to Italian neorealism.

The major similarity with neorealist cinema being the desolate gray and the
high speed stock used to give a grainier image.
 CINEMATOGRAPHIC PROPERTIES OF THE FILM:
CAMERA MOVEMENT

Unlike the diagonal tracking of characters against a city back drop as in neo-
realist cinema of Italy that produces a classic kind of a perspective, the
parallel tracking in the film renders the image some what flatter by reducing
the kind of depth we would see in the neo-realist cinema. This is further
accentuated by using much faster stock and generally operating with a zoom
lens mounted on the camera for convenience in the exterior, which further
reduces the depth of field under overcast conditions in the exterior.
 THE OVERALL CINEMATOGRAPHIC STYLE

(1932) (1953) (1968)

Henri Decae’s photography of the film drew a lot from the stills of Paris taken by
Henri Cartier-Bresson and others like him. For Cartier-Bresson the decisive
moment occurs when details of the subject matter reached the right balance in
compositional terms on his camera lens.
 THE OVERALL CINEMATOGRAPHIC STYLE

In that sense, the film is a series of decisive moments until its last freeze frame.
The only difference being the case that the film is staged.
 SOUND AND MUSIC

Most of the sound is post-synchronized. The sound recording equipment

necessary for recording direct sound was very cumbersome and expensive and
consequently much of the sound track was recorded later. The main sequence
of direct recording in the film is the one with the psychologist. Even here the
voice of the psychologist was added later.
 SOUND AND MUSIC

This was the only Truffaut film for which Jean Constantin wrote the music. The
music is relatively conventional, being part of the language of the film, playing
a role as important as the images or the dialogue in emphasizing the mood of
the action or a theme. It is not, however, used to create certain types of
reaction from the audience - for example suspense, fear etc. Truffaut himself
was dissatisfied with the score, feeling that it was too light and facile and that it
sometimes drew attention away from the visual imagery.
 EDITING

In general as Truffaut has used long takes, the editing is more functional
rather than expressive, except during two instances. The first instance is the
title sequence in which he we see Parish through a series of jump cuts. While
for many directors the title sequence serves primarily the functional purpose
of giving factual information about the film, here the sequence plays an
important role in evoking certain of the themes of the film, in setting the
context for them and for some of the action.
 EDITING

The sequence had originally been intended to be part of the film narrative, a
sequence in which Antoine and René would take a taxi to the Eiffel Tower.

The sequence lasts for 158 seconds and is a series of low-angle tracking shots
of buildings behind which the Eiffel Tower can be glimpsed. Towards the end of
the sequence, the camera approaches the Eiffel Tower, viewing it from an
extreme low-angle before tracking round its legs and moving away.
 EDITING

The only place where editing is used for an expressive purpose is when the film cuts
from Antoine in the cage to the children watching Red Riding Hood, thus setting up
a comparison and moving from the particular to the general. The film is not bound
by Classical Form of the narrative, but gets into the realm of montage.
 GROUP STYLE: THE FRENCH NEW WAVE

The film was both a commercial and artistic success. At the artistic level
Truffaut received the Best Director Award at Cannes. At the commercial level
the success of the film opened up the gates for his friends like Jean Luc
Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacque Rivette and a host of other young
filmmakers of that time. In that sense the French New Wave was certainly a
tremendous wave in the history of cinema and it begins with The 400 Blows.
This modernist group style is distinguished both from Classicism and
Formalism.
 TRUFFAUT’S PERSONAL STYLE

The Wild Child (1969)

The 400 Blows, along with The Wild Child (1969) and Small Change (1969),
represent one of the most tender and loving depictions of childhood in cinema.
Truffaut's non-sentimental view of his children characters denotes a respect for
children living in a difficult world made by adults. It is in that, poetic realism.