Truffaut once said: A director's film is the chronicle of his life.
01
Filmed in 1959, Four Hundred Blows is a semi-autobiographical work by François Truffaut, one of the initiators of the French New Wave, exploring the life and inner world of a 13-year-old boy.
One of the most important concepts of the New Wave period, the author's film, also has a deep relationship with Truffaut.
He advocated: to make a movie, the important thing is not to make it, but to become the producer of the film. This separates cinema from rigid industrial processes and becomes a more private and free expression.
02
The film also bears the common characteristics of the works of the New Wave period: low-cost investment, a large number of non-professional actors, an emphasis on feelings rather than narrative, the use of handheld photography, the use of lenses is more flexible, and many works have the autobiographical nature of the director, depicting the life experience he is most familiar with.
In Europe in the 1950s, after experiencing World War II, the film began with a moving Paris street scene, which set a thick and dull tone for the whole film.
Truffaut portrayed Antoine's problematic teenager in the film, which is the epitome of his own childhood. The secret love of his mother, the indifference of his stepfather, the fault of the teacher, school and family have become places where he always wants to escape.
The film adopts the "life flow" way of narrative, the whole film does not have a strong dramatic conflict, the connection between the plot is not close, the director aims to show the social environment and psychological changes in which the male protagonist is located at that time through the performance of some scattered life fragments.
03
At the end of the film, there is a long shot of 3 minutes long.
Antoine escaped from the juvenile detention center, trotted all the way, ran to the sea, ran to the world of freedom, that was the place he had always longed for, where freedom was. However, the camera records all this calmly and objectively, as if reality is pressing behind him, leaving him with nowhere to escape. There was no surprise on his face after the escape, but a more confused expression.
Finally, the camera stopped on his panicked face as he turned around and stopped abruptly.
Where can a thirteen-year-old go? Neither home nor school had a place for him.
In the depressing and dark tone of the whole film, only Anthony is happy when he skips class. Anthony, playing in a rapidly rotating cylinder, looks at the crowd of onlookers from a sporty perspective and feels a blur. The gaze of others did not seem to him to be important, and he was already at the peak of happiness and could leave all his troubles behind.
04
Every child has his own inner world, the person he wants to be. For the young Antoine, the person he most admired was the French writer Balzac.
He secretly enshrined the writer's photograph at home, and in his writing class, he hoped to show his literary skills, but the composition was questioned by the teacher, and the shrine dedicated to Balzac was discovered and destroyed by his parents due to an accident.
The originator of the French New Wave was André Bazin, whose theoretical anthology "What Is Film" put forward the theory of long shots, which had a profound impact on film research and is still a must-read book in film and television schools.
Truffaut, who was unfortunate in his early years, regarded Bazin as his true father and was in line with Bazin in his artistic concepts. Sadly, Bazin died before the release of Four Hundred Blows and didn't get to see the film that pays tribute to him.
05
In the film, the director used the representation of long shots several times.
As an aesthetic concept as opposed to the montage in the editing, Bazin believes that the technique of the montage is too obvious and is an imposed means to make the audience think passively. Only long shots can ensure the objectivity of the subject, allowing the audience to find the real meaning in the shot for themselves.
The most famous of the films is the long running scene at the end of the film, which shows the helplessness of the little boy.
In addition, in the scene showing the students running in the morning, a long overhead shot is also used to show the naughtiness of the students, sneaking away while the teacher is not paying attention. Highlight Antoine's wanderings on the streets, stealing milk for a living.
Antoine, who has run away from home, wanders the streets before dawn, trying to steal a bottle of milk placed on the side of the road, carefully trying again and again, and slowly drinking the satisfaction after winning the hand, which makes people sigh.
It was dark when he was taken by the police car to the juvenile detention center, and in the dim light of the street lamp, we saw a quiet face of Antoine's silent tears.
06
The film is a microcosm of Truffaut's adolescence, but anyone who watches the film should be able to find the shadow of their childhood, and they all once had an Antoine's confusion.
Antoine represents a marginal child who is not accepted by the education system and the family, and his future life is destined to be a bleak.
Every little thing in childhood experience invisibly shapes our personality, and the education of the day after tomorrow requires the joint efforts of society and family. Both schools and families are nurturing the next generation of talent, and if we don't learn from the failures of the past, history will repeat itself.
Author of this article
Dogs
Film and television literary and artistic workers and enthusiasts, once drifted in North America, as a television reporter