Why don't I like The 400 Blows anymore?

        Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows made an undeniable impact on independent film culture. At one point, it was one of my favorite films of all-time. However, when I revisited it this time around, it left me empty.

        Perhaps it is unfair to compare Truffaut’s film from 1959 to recent work, but there is a clear line between The 400 Blows and the modern American coming-of-age film. Take, for example, Noah Baumbach, a filmmaker who borrows very heavily from Truffaut (Baumbach recreates multiple shots from The 400 Blows identically in his own Frances Ha). Baumbach’s films, which are mostly seen as mediocre, exhibit the same kind of Freudian analysis of how certain methods of parenting can lead to neurosis and disillusionment. While Truffaut’s film is not bad in this regard, it feels mostly like a jumping-off point for these sort of themes.

        Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird surpasses both Truffaut and Baumbach, developing a complex, potent thesis on how behavioral patterns in parenting develop traits through the family tree. This is an example of how a subgenre can advance over time; Freudian psychology is a complex dialectical area of study, and perhaps it is a testament to Truffaut that filmmakers today are continuing to sharpen these themes. Ironically, the New Wave considered cinema to be a communication between filmmaker and audience, and in this case, there is communication between two films that develops themes over time. For example, like her husband Baumbach, Gerwig samples The 400 Blows for a scene in Lady Bird. Truffaut’s scene uses the mother-son dynamic, whereas Gerwig’s is mother-daughter, but both involve the mother reaching out in a moment of adolescent confusion. In Gerwig’s scene, Lady Bird’s mother tells her that she was raised by an abusive alcoholic, which explains why she ended up being a disciplinarian. In Truffaut’s scene, Antoine’s mother tells him that she was rebellious growing up too, and therefore relates to what he’s going through. Two different films use the same form to make opposite points; two films communicate with each other to develop a synthesis.

        Truffaut’s films are unfortunately compared to Godard’s, given their friendship and the parallels between their careers. Godard has superior notions for composition and editing, as well as a greater conviction in his politics. This is where Truffaut’s films suffer as a part of the French New Wave movement; though Truffaut debuted his film first, Godard defined the aesthetic and the ideology of the New Wave. Breathless changed the way the entire world thought about editing and narrative structure. In La Chinoise, Godard makes one of the most compelling political assertions in the history of film, among Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible and Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. While Truffaut’s film suffers in the timeline of coming-of-age films, Godard was totally innovative and original. General film grammar has changed since La Chinoise, but Godard’s aesthetic transcends time. His films from the sixties feel like they are from the future, and his late-period work is from another dimension.

        Truffaut has some technical talent, but not to Godard’s degree. The 400 Blows looks good, but it is formally conventional. The few flashy shots and edits that are peppered in are nice to look at, but there are not enough of them to actively engage the viewer in a dialogue with the film, as Godard aimed to do. Though they both came from Bazin’s school of filmmaking, Godard challenged Bazin’s notions: he reclaimed the shot-reverse shot technique, typically seen as the most boring method for shooting dialogue, and turned it into subtext on the dynamic between men and women in romantic endeavors. Through extended shot-reverse shot scenes in Masculin Féminin, Godard turned the man into the interviewer, the intruder, the predator, and the woman into the interviewee, the victim, the prey. He holds on long takes of his female characters to emphasize discomfort.

        The 400 Blows’ musical score, which I used to love and have to listen to on YouTube because it was not on any streaming services, felt completely flat this time around. There cannot be more than two or three different compositions, and the main theme feels repetitive and almost irritating by the third act. In fact, for me, the film as a whole pretty much lost all of its charm for reasons I cannot fully explain. A part of it could be Truffaut’s morally repugnant statement on the superior Satyajit Ray film Pather Panchali, of which he said: “I don't want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands”. Maybe Day for Night turned me off on Truffaut; to me it felt pointless and aesthetically uninteresting.

        The saving grace of The 400 Blows is its remarkable lead performance. Léaud’s natural talent and screen presence expresses the depth of his character better than his dialogue. The most touching scenes in the film involve Léaud’s expressive, sorrowful face. The film is only funny when Antoine is funny, sad when Antoine is sad.

IHRTLUHC