Directors: François Truffaut

"I'm an unstable psychotic individual with perverted tendencies."

LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS (1959)

Director: François Truffaut
Country: France
Genre: Drama
Length: 99 minutes



François Truffaut's first feature is perhaps his most famous one. You may attribute this fact to its very characteristic melodrama, a similarity it shared with several worldwide movies of the same year. However, Les Quatre Cents Coups is arguably the director's best film, a gorgeous piece of art that combined the devastating proportions of the Italian neorealism and the innovative features of the French New Wave. This time, the element used to contrast the humankind's original state of purity with the adulthood's moral corruption is an adolescent, a little young man whose perspective towards a brighter world is not compatible with the present reality. The result is a heartbreaking drama as honest and sincere as it can get. Complexity, once more, is originated from simplicity. The nature of the film has been numerously referenced even nowadays, but its sheer power and realistic depiction of the consequences of an abandoned soul since its youth is what gives Les Quatre Cents Coups the great honor of belonging to a list where the best films of all time can be found.

Antoine Doinel is a 14-year-old Parisian boy who constantly lacks the proper attention and love of his parents; consequently, he keeps skipping school so he can go to the city?s fair and to the movie theater with his friends. However, he soon discovers that her mother has been having an affair. Under so much pressure and lack of comprehension, he decides to steal a typewriter and is suspended from school. This particular chain of events will have a very important meaning in the life of Antoine, a meaning he will understand sooner or later. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen, losing it against Pillow Talk (1959). François Truffaut was nominated for the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival of 1959, losing it against Marcel Camus for his film Orfeu Negro (1959). However, Truffaut won the OCIC Award and a prize for Best Director.

The streets of Paris are represented from a dramatic perspective. A full French society ? its capital city ? is represented so its degrading characteristics and the already-decaying innocence of Antoine can be utterly contrasted. An immediate comparison with Robert Bresson's Pickpocket (1959) may inevitably arise because of its Dostoyevskyan approach to the topic considering his novel "Crime and Punishment". On a personal note, it is a very interesting analysis since both films have as its main character a person who decides to take the criminal, yet seemingly easiest path with the sole purpose of fitting in their surrounding environment. Nonetheless, whereas Michel makes a living out of it, Antoine has not the proper age for becoming an independent person yet. His main problem is his family, the relevant nucleus of the society that hides him some truths and treats him unfairly without any significant love. A very accurate psychological reaction the youth have under these circumstances is to gain attention through any means possible. That is why the final decision of Antoine is plot wise justified, despite being a universally rejected action under determined moral standards.

Unlike neorealism, Paris is not represented as a city in chaos. It may mirror the depiction of the village Bresson decided to film in a more recent movie: Mouchette (1966). French drama as a genre always showed a conflict through a very cathartic symbol, which would be either a boy or a child. They are put in very peculiar situations that are out of their reach for controlling the upcoming consequential events. In the case of Antoine, he consciously kept making decisions: to skip school, to go to the movies, to steal. On the other hand, he never decided when and where to be born. He wasn't given the choice of deciding his biological family. None of us can. Because of the treatment and humiliation he receives, the parental figures lose any sign of authority and positive influence over him. Such events are not easy to show on a film, but Truffaut was very aware of the fact that a character study implicates several varying factors that directly depends on the individual's unrepeated personality. He is emotionally forced to perform actions he may not have wanted to perform in the first place. A movie theater cannot fill the emptiness inside him. Mechanical games and the fun of having friends will never compensate the absence of happiness his parents stand for, since they are the most important human relationship he will be able to have in his life.

Because of this intense cause-and-consequence relationship portrayal, the film presents its conclusion with one of the most surprisingly beautiful and arguably devastating endings ever put to film, a long shot that does not have to show any single frame more. The ending may symbolize the search of hope and freedom that material means never allowed him to obtain. Whether a worse fate still waits for him or he manages to acquire independent liberty, it is an irrelevant fact. The religion that heavily plays its implicit role may also be a factor the viewer will want to take into consideration. The purpose of the poetical cinematography is to reflect either the ugliness or the visual beauty of the landscapes and the filming locations, not to mention the strong tension of the atmospheric family dinner scenes. The modesty of the screenplay, a modesty that hides a great amount of literary talent, enlightens the weakness and the corruptibleness of the human condition. A fully-developed character is offered to the film thanks to an extraordinary performance by the young actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, a performance which talent and effect where relied on believable and natural reactions and facial expressions rather than screams, tears and endless monologues. The technical aspects did not precisely ask for an exaggerated perfection. It is the Italian feeling the plot itself provided to the film the one that makes Les Quatre Cents Coups to shine.

François Truffaut managed to construct a grand drama masterpiece in his first attempt. Cinema could not have offered him a better welcome to the fantastic world of moviemaking. The Parisian streets weep and the sound of the waves run along Antoine in Les Quatre Cents Coups, perhaps his most successful, popular and groundbreaking feature film. The people have the least interest in surrounding Antoine, but the film surrounds him. It protects him. It understands him. This experience may also provide a strong cathartic epiphany throughout its running length; it is one of the main risks the viewer will be subject to. Even so, it is not a negative aspect. Les Quatre Cents Coups makes the French New Wave to show its sentimental side, and it ends up being an adorable film, an easy-to-treasure European gem. 1959 is one of the best years cinema has ever experienced, and this is just one more solid proof.

100/100

Tirez sur le Pianiste is, perhaps, the most joyful and enjoyable Truffaut film talking about the entertainment value. It's obviously a superbly directed and shot film, and has the same typical cool (and somewhat dumb) characters we tend to find in the French New Wave cinema. Very recommended.

86/100

Truffaut did well with this one, but compared to the novel, it stayed very short and incomplete. Even so, this version is very satisfying. See it either if you're a fan of Ray Bradbury or Francois Truffaut. Impossible not to like it.

75/100