The 400 Blows Film Analysis

The debut film of Francois Truffaut, The 400 Blows is world-renowned for being the epitome of the French New Wave movement. Following the award for best director at the 1959 Cannes festival, Truffaut’s The 400 Blows entered theatres of all nations ranging from its domestic French theatres to the foreign theatres such as in the United States. Domestic (French) reception of the film was quite positive, and commented by Jean-Luc Godard declared it to be “most free, film of the world” of the time (Godard). Certain American critics were surprisingly less appreciative of the film, with comments such as “All of them (French films) display remarkable competences, although none of them is a satisfactory picture” (Kauffmann, 21). As with all general
One critic found a flaw in the film as “its powers of insight do not match the vividness of its surface record… he has not found the revealing devices that would open the heart of his story without breaking the admirably cool flow of its recording.” This same critic goes on to comment that its success and reception is mostly based on its win at Cannes. (Hatch). The “insight” Hatch refers to is the subjective realism of how the emotional state of the Antoine Doinel character is shown to the audience. Alpert explicitly points out the approach of candid documentary as a hindrance to the overall movie along with its graininess of the film as trying too hard to be dramatically artistic (Alpert). The expressive nature of the objective realism apparently detracted too much from the subjective realism to a point where the overall film is hurt by it according to these critics. Although the film vividly depicts all aspects of his life in the episodic nature of the film, highbrow reviews mention that there is a lack of subjective realism matching up with the level of objective realism to weaken the film. The reviewers ultimately extend their supposition to how the “highbrow” audience may be disappointed with the film for its imbalanced