Antoine Doinel was played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, who has a kind of solemn detachment, as if his heart had suffered obscure wounds long before the film began. This was the first in a long collaboration between actor and director; they returned to the character in the short film "Antoine and Collette" (1962) and three more features: "Stolen Kisses" (1968), "Bed and Board" (1970) and "Love on the Run" (1979).
The later films have their own merits, and "Stolen Kisses" is one of Truffaut's best, but "The 400 Blows," with all its simplicity and feeling, is in a class by itself. It was Truffaut's first feature, and one of the founding films of the French New Wave. We sense that it was drawn directly out of Truffaut's heart. It is dedicated to Andre Bazin, the influential French film critic who took the fatherless Truffaut under his arm at a time when the young man seemed to stand between life as a filmmaker and life in trouble.
Little is done in the film for pure effect. Everything adds to the impact of the final shot. We meet Antoine when he is in his early teens, and living with his mother and stepfather in a crowded walkup where they always seem to be squeezing out of each other's way. The mother (Claire Maurier) is a blond who likes tight sweaters and is distracted by poverty, by her bothersome son, and by an affair with a man from work. The stepfather (Albert Remy) is a nice enough sort, easy-going, and treats the boy in a friendly fashion although he is not deeply attached to him. Both parents are away from home a lot, and neither has the patience to pay close attention to the boy: They judge him by appearances, and by the reports of others who misunderstand him.
At school, Antoine has been typecast by his teacher (Guy Decombie) as a troublemaker. His luck is not good. When a pinup calendar is being passed from hand to hand, his is the hand the teacher finds it in. Sent to stand in the corner, he makes faces for his classmates and writes a lament on the wall. The teacher orders him to decline his offending sentence, as punishment. His homework is interrupted. Rather than return to school without it, he skips. His excuse is that he was sick. After his next absence, he says his mother has died. When she turns up at his school, alive and furious, he is marked as a liar.
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