Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Hundred Blows)

Perhaps it is time for all of us to realize that Francois Truffaut's Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows) is the greatest film about vagaries of adolescence ever made. Even if we include in this brief canon of films about adolescence: Michael Curtiz's ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938), Luis Bunuel's LOS OLVIDADOS (1950) Rene Clement's LES JEUX INTERDITS(1952), Nicholas Ray's REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955), Larry Clark's KIDS (1995), Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT (2003) The 400 Blows ranks at the top of the list because even though it is perhaps the most intimate portrait of male adolescence it is also a searing portrait of adult hypocrisy. What Truffaut seems to capture by centering his film upon the experiences of Antoine Doniel is the dupicity and eroding empathy of post-war adults towards a generation of children born during or just after World War 2. In effect, Doniel (the 15 year old actor who stars in the film) is a victim of an adult generation that is constantly sending him the mixed signal of," Do as I say, but not as I do." This mixed signal is particularly discernible regarding the relationship of Doniel to his mother whom he catches kissing another man while he is playing hooky from school In fact, it is this pivotal event (filmed in just such an off-handed, even casual manner) that becomes a major turning point in the relationship between Doniel and his mother as she attempts to emotionally bribe him to keep him from telling her husband and his step-father her secret. Our sympathy and our emotions are tied to Doniel via the two slaps he receives within the film. The first slap is from his father which is delivered in front all of his schoolmates in class after he has told a lie about his mother having died as an excuse for why he was absent at school. This slap although it is well deserved serves two functions: 1) it shames him in front of his schoolmates and that shame is transferred to the audience as we have all certainly felt that kind of shame even if we have not shared the exact same circumstances and 2) the lie itself was a kind of 'sublimated' loss of feeling between Doniel and his mother that is revisited upon him as a slap in the face for having been born. The second slap is from a male attendant at the junvile observation center where he has been sent after having been caught stealing a typewriter (machine a ecrire) from his father's job. This slap, although it occurs right in front of the other inmates, has less of an emotional effect upon Doniel and reveals the 'hardness' of heart that is growing within him. One might ask, is it simply the parents fault for juvenile delinquency as the canon of previously mentioned films might lead one to easily conclude, but I believe and Truffaut is empathic in his dramatic demonstration that this delinquency is born from the child hearing things that he shouldn't hear and seeing things that he shouldn't see. To be specific, Doniel is always placed in a privileged position to hear his parents arguing (at first about their relationship and then about Doniel) and later seeing his mother committing adultery and the emotional bribery she tries to use upon to cover it up. Later in the film we find out that Doniel as also heard (from a conversation between his mother and his Grandmother) that his mother wanted an abortion; that he was not wanted and the effect of all of this privileged information is at the center of the declining experiences of Doniel and perhaps to a certain extent all delinquents, because this information has an emotional effect that is most often never addressed by adults who blithely believe that children cannot comprehend the duplicity of adults. It may be the adult perception of adolescence itself that Truffaut is challenging with his masterpiece, LES QUATRE CENT COUPS.