The Bottom Line
- Landmark French New Wave movie that appears on most lists of great films
- Movie is accessible, feels spontaneous, and has a lyrical visual style
- Film features a brilliant performance by teenager Jean-Pierre Léaud
- Movie lacks a strong narrative drive
- Brief cameo appearances by a pair of stars don’t fit in well with rest of film
- DVD for a classic movie deserves more bonus materials
Description
- Fox Lorber DVD containing French-language film “The 400 Blows” (1959)
- Influential New Wave movie directed by François Truffaut
- Film ranks 35th on 2002 “Sight & Sound” critics’ list of greatest movies
- DVD contains English-language audio commentary by film critic Glenn Kenny
- Excellent picture (widescreen 2.35:1, black-and-white)
- Fairly good sound quality, although music has soured in a few places
- MPAA Rating: Not rated
- Feature run time: 1 hour 39 minutes
- DVD release date: April 23, 2002
Guide Review - "The 400 Blows" DVD
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.
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.
Truffaut’s visual style in “The 400 Blows” is exuberant. The movie was shot at interesting locations in and around Paris, except for the last sequences, which were shot in Normandy. The film feels free-flowing and spontaneous, and even though Truffaut avoids sentimentality, he fills his movie with warmth and humor. I think he does a great job of showing that bourgeois society is trying to destroy Antoine’s joy of life, but the boy simply won’t allow them to crush his spirit.
The Fox Lorber DVD comes with only one bonus material of any consequence, the feature-length English-language audio commentary by film critic Glenn Kenny. Kenny goes into considerable detail about Truffaut and the French New Wave, and I found his commentary quite informative.
