One of the Greatest Films of All Time
François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) is a lyrical and accessible movie that appears on most lists of great films. I'd say it's the best movie ever made about adolescence.
On the Film's Title
The English-language title is a literal translation of the French-language title, Les Quatre cents coups, which has always baffled me. On the DVD commentary track, Glenn Kenny states that it's an untranslatable colloquialism that means "to give oneself over to every sort of excess; to make trouble; to be a hell-raiser."
A Filmmaker and His Lead Actor
In The 400 Blows, the 28-year-old Truffaut created one of cinema's most memorable protagonists in Antoine Doinel, a boy of about 14. The film is semi-autobiographical, and I imagine that's one of the reasons it has such a strong emotional pull. But I think another reason is that Truffaut found just the right teenager to play his alter ego: Jean-Pierre Léaud and Antoine Doinel constitute one the best matches between actor and character in cinema history. Over a period of 20 years, Truffaut made four more movies with Léaud as Antoine.
