In 1959 a man by the name of Francois Truffaut was paving the way for the future of filmmaking with this masterpiece. The 400 Blows is about a boy name Antoine Doinel who has been put upon by society. He is a young boy who is trapped in the machine with two parents who can't handle him, teachers who hate their students, and no direction but to become another cog. Yet Doinel wants out and he sure tries. The triumph of the movie is that it is mostly improv scripting, Truffaut set up the scene but let the actors create the dialogue. They create people who are real because they aren't confined by someone else's words, they are the characters they portray. The camera moves and tells as much of the story as the characters do which is a sign of the french new wave of filmmaking. The camera casts everyone in shadow except Doinel, the only one who seems to know what he is doing. It is a movie of great experimentation and while there isn't really a driving force in the plot, it is one of the most engaging films because of its ingenuity right down to the ending. The ending is very much a part of the new wave, and ending with no resolution, at least not in the normal sense. It is an ending of poetry and beauty that hadn't even been seen prior. Since then we've seen this style of ending in such films as The Squid and the Whale by Noah Baumbach or The Graduate or Children of Men, all are variations of the ending but in the same vein. Truly a landmark film any aficionado must see.
1 comment:
completely agree on this front, probably, in my opinion, one of the 3 or 4 best films of the French New Wave, and a perfect precursor for a year later when Goddard was going to blow the doors off of cinema with the first modern film.
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