1950's Top 20

The greatest film ever made...

The kind of film that makes me believe in perfection. Hitchcock's masterpiece.

Psychiatrist: "Your parents say you're always lying.
Antoine Doinel: Oh, I lie now and then, I suppose. Sometimes I'd tell them the truth and they still wouldn't believe me, so I prefer to lie."



In The 400 Blows, the first chapter in François Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series, we meet our hero (Jean-Pierre Léaud) as a disobedient 12-year-old Parisian. A child of whom his parents seem to care little, he has a penchant for dishonesty that gets him in constant trouble both at home and at school, so he decides to run away, promising to return when he has become a man. After he steals a typewriter, he's sent to military school, where he escapes through a hole in a fence and heads for the sea.

Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series is a landmark of cinema, as it marks a rare instance of an actor originating a character as a child then continuing to play that character in five films over the course of twenty years, but more importantly because it serves as a backbone of the French New Wave. The series as a whole is a fascinating look at how a young man such as Antoine grows up, matures (well, to an extent), and essentially adapts to life. All five chapters are good, but there's no question in my mind that The 400 Blows is the crown jewel. Partly because he is a child and children tend to not see potential complications, this is the most focus we see from Antoine in terms of his goals and desires. He knows simply that he does not like home or school and that he'd rather be elsewhere, whereas in later segments we quite often see Antoine torn between multiple options.

And why shouldn't he? Truffaut essentially tells us as much in the famous final shot - a shot that probably has influenced more filmmakers than any other - of The 400 Blows where Antoine, having successfully run away, reaches the ocean for the first time in his life. He takes a few steps into the surf, then turns back, but he is unsure where to go. He has achieved his goal of running away to the shore and now hasn't a clue what to do next, so he just stands there. At the height of his dilemma, Truffaut freezes the shot and zooms in on that face full of indecision. He is stuck, completely unsure what to do next, and that is the theme Truffaut continues to explore throughout the series.

As this is one of the first films of the Nouvelle Vague, he appears to be placing the art form as a whole on that beach with Antoine. The New Wave, many have said, birthed the modern film era, taking it out of the classic period with its tendency to follow formula and essentially breathed new life into it. Truffaut, Godard, and their cohorts showed a complete disregard for the conventions of cinema and made their films by any means necessary. This often included filming in the streets of Paris without permits, employing friends as actors, and working with little to no budget. But, necessity being the mother of invention, they found ways to create techniques, methods and images that would resonate world-wide. It could be argued that there isn't an American film from the last five years that isn't at least indirectly influenced by the New Wave. So Truffaut is asking the film medium what it wants to do. Does it want to go back to the military school and continue making the same films over and over again, or does it keep running into the unknown. The answer, of course, is the latter.

The 400 Blows is, at least to me, a deceptively simple film. At no singular point does it seem as if you're watching a great film. That is, there isn't that particular point where a single moment blows you away, but the sum total of the film does exactly that - it tears you apart. This is Truffaut's first film, finished at the age of 26, and it's easy to see the effect of that innocence on the screen. This is the look of a filmmaker who doesn't yet "know" what he can and cannot do, so he just does what he thinks will be the most effective. And he's pretty much correct every single time. The film, largely based on his own childhood as a rebellious child prone to skip school and go to the cinema, seems to understand children better than most, and it understands Antoine Doinel most of all. But it refuses to fully condone his actions, instead sympathizing with him in a way that makes them understandable, even if they are wrong.

He also bring a bit of whimsy to the film as he shows how the children as a group respond to authority. In a clever scene, the children are on a physical education run through the streets of Paris, trailing behind a gym teacher and his incessant whistle-blowing. Truffaut puts the camera on a roof and follows the class as the students peel away from the group and head for freedom until finally there are only two students following him. They are either the least clever of the students or the most obedient or a combination of the two. Regardless, they are tied to the status quo while their classmates are off living their lives in the Parisian streets. Morally, Antoine Doinel and his like may be classically wrong, but they are choosing to do things by their own rules, and when you live by your own rules, it's hard to judge those actions by classical morality.

What is hard to describe is how a film that takes in all of this can be beautiful and thrilling, how something that sounds like a run-of-the-mill drama can be a masterpiece. Maybe that's ultimately a sign of true cinematic mastery, its essence can't be captured on a page (or a keyboard), you have to watch it. The 400 Blows is one of those films whose importance and legacy goes way beyond those of a simple film. It changed filmmaking and helped to inspire a new generation of filmmakers with more attention to the smaller details of film production. Without Truffaut's story of a young boy adventuring out on his own, we might not have The Goonies or Home Alone, but without Antoine Doinel, cinema in general would be a far different and less multi-faceted art form than it is today.

Perfection in the art of filmmaking. The list of films and directors whose work is influenced by this film is endless...

Sugar: "Oh Josephine! The most wonderful thing happened!
Joe: What?
Sugar: Guess.
Joe: They repealed prohibition?
Jerry: Oh come now, you can do better than that.
Sugar: I met one of them.
Joe: One of whom?
Sugar: Shell Oil Junior. He's got millions, he's got glasses, he's got a yacht!
Joe: You don't say.
Jerry: He's not only got a yacht, he's got a bicycle!"



Two broke musicians, Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon), accidentally witness the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre and, in a desperate attempt to hide from the mob, go undercover in an all-girl band en route to Florida. One of the band members is Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a dim-witted blonde looking to marry a millionaire. Being an unsavoury type, Joe uses information given in confidence to cast himself as Sugar's ideal man while Jerry's drag act is going well enough that he's drawn the affection of an actual millionaire (Joe E. Brown). The flawless plan hits a rough patch when the mobsters arrive for a Friends of Italian Opera convention and discover the ruse.

There's a theory in Hollywood that the productions where everyone is ready to kill each other often make the best films, that having a good time doesn't equal success. Or as Matt Damon once put it on Letterman, if having fun made a good film, Canonball Run would be the greatest film of all-time. It isn't, though, which is a bit of a shame. The theory, oddly enough, holds true for comedies as well as dramas, even though you'd think that comedic timing would be enhanced by camaraderie. Not always. It is enhanced by talent, and while Some Like It Hot didn't have the most pleasant set to visit, it did have talent in spades.

As the stories go, Marilyn Monroe brought a lot of difficulty to the set with her. She was constantly forgetting lines, showing up late, and Tony Curtis compared kissing her to "kissing Hitler". Yet she had that rare ability to seduce anyone and anything, and that translated so well on screen you can forgive her many quirks and headaches. I imagine that Monroe could have made a gay man straight and had she been a lesbian, a straight woman gay. There aren't many actors alive with that sort of inherent sexuality and the ability to make everything seem so fresh an innocent, from the dialogue to the scenario to the performance itself. A great number of actors become bored or repetitive after so many takes, but Monroe makes it all feel as if she's making it up on the spot, even if you can clearly see her reading the cue cards.

But that's nothing compared to the turns by her male counterparts. Tony Curtis, often shorted in Some Like It Hot discussions because part of his Josephine dialogue was dubbed, gives a tricky performance as he has to essentially play three different characters: Joe, the conniving musician willing to bet two overcoats on a dog named Greased Lightning, Josephine, the girl saxophone player who went to conservatory, and Junior, the imaginary heir to Shell Oil who is unable to ever love again. There are even sequences where he has to play all three. The best (or at least my favourite) is Junior, the oil magnate who's done what any red-blooded male who'd been in drag on the run from the mob and befriended Marilyn Monroe would do: namely, use the information given him by Monroe as to the type of man she's looking for as a shortcut to seduce her. And he uses a Cary Grant impression to disguise his voice, which is a very clever touch.

In a career full of classic performances, this is one of Jack Lemmon's best. As Daphne he's forced to hide his horn-dog tendencies when he's trust into a sleeping car full of beautiful women. He keeps repeating to himself, "I'm a girl, I'm a girl, I'm a girl" as a means of staving of his latent desires. When he attracts a real millionaire, he can't seem to shake him no matter what, then is forced to go on a date with him when Joe needs to borrow the man's yacht. The millionaire proposes and when asked by Joe why a guy would want to marry a guy, Jerry replies, "Security." It's difficult to put into words exactly what's so great about his performance. Suffice to say that in a film often mentioned as the funniest of all-time, he's easily the funniest one.

Of course, this comedic crown jewel would not be possible without the unique genius of Billy Wilder. Wilder, who's work includes such classics as The Apartment, Sunset Blvd., and Double Idemnity, did comedy better than anyone and drama better than most. He very nearly directed Schindler's List and at one point held a record for Oscar nominations. What is very often overlooked in Some Like It Hot is just how well it is directed. This is a film that borders on the absurd and could very easily veer into utter insanity, but Wilder is able to keep the entire thing grounded, and somehow realistic. And when you consider the premise of the film, that's quite the accomplishment.

In a lot of ways, Some Like It Hot serves as a template for what has become known as the Charlie Kaufman comedy. There are about a thousand things happening in this film, and few of them make any sense whatsoever when viewed apart from the film, yet they all work within the film's context. And they work beautifully at that. This is a rare commodity in film: a landmark, influential film that feels just as fresh today as it did almost half a decade years ago. It hasn't aged a bit. In fact, were this to have been released in 2008 rather than 1959, it probably wouldn't suffer a bit in popularity. And it probably would have still gotten six Oscar nominations, although something tells me it may have ended up with more. There's no question this is a classic, but it's also a cinematic delight for the ages. There are few films in history that I can recommend with confidence to nearly everyone. This is one of them.