Les Quatre Cents Coups* (400 Blows)

Now I can understand why this movie got a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is the favorite movie of a many great film directors like Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) and Satyajit Ray (Honorary Academy Award Winner from Bengal, India). It is a 1959 French language movie directed by François Truffaut, one of the greats of the French New Wave Cinema.

It is a simple story about simple things in life. The cinematography is done in such a way that you cannot imagine why such a particular long shot was made but is actually integral to highlight the artistic value of the movie. It went on to win the 1959 Cannes' Best Director Award.

Antoine Doinel is a a 12 year old boy who is having a hard time adjusting to school where all his mates are up to mischief and he is the fall guy and is punished by his ferocious school master. At home, he goes home to an empty house where his father is forever busy at the racing track and his inaffectionate mother is apparently 'busy' with work. She is actually two-timing his father with her clandestine activities.

Always scolded by his parents (especially mother) and howled upon by his frustrated teacher who always pinpoints him for all mischiefs in class compounded by his lies, he gets disillusioned by school and his family. He and his school friend always play truant and gets engaged in small pranks. During one of his truancy, he bumps into his mother who was engaged in a passionate embrace and kiss with a stranger, much to the embarrassment of both. He later runs away from his home. He is apprehended by the night watchman at his father's office when he tries to return a typewriter that he managed to steal but decided to return it when he could not sell the loot.

His father is called in who decides that the best course of action is to hand him to police and have him rehabilitated at a juvenile delinquent camp.

Doniel's incarceration and interview with the psychiatrist reveals that he was an illegitimate child who, if not for his grandmother's intervention would have been aborted. His father (stepfather) stepped in later to be kind enough to lend him his surname. His early childhood was filled with him being shuttled between wet nurses and his old grandmother till she grew too old to care for him. Reluctantly, his mother took him in, curbing her carefree life.

One day, our hero breaks away from the camp through a broken fence. He runs and runs until he reaches a seaside - he always yearned to see the ocean. And the movie ends. FIN.

A simple story with good acting from the child star. The cast are mostly the children, the adults are there only to fill up the gaps. In one scene, there is a puppet show on the story of Red Riding Hood when there is a violent showdown with the wolf. The director takes great effort to depict the spontaneous the facial responses of the children at such a gruesomely violent scenario.

*Les Quatre Cents Coups is the original French name for the the movie 400 Blows. The French title refers to the expression "faire les quatre cents coups", which means "to raise hell".