LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS (France, 1959)
Wednesday, 13th January 2010

This screening of a new print of François Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows) is the first of two tributes this season to one of the most famous movements in cinema history. I am referring to the so-called Nouvelle Vague or New Wave which transformed French cinema in the late fifties. This reappearance of Truffaut’s film marks the fiftieth anniversary of its original release in this country and it was that occasion that made Britain wake up fully to what was happening in France, just as it was Look Back In Anger and the subsequent media talk about ‘Angry Young Men’ that ushered in a new phase on English theatre. Viewed from the perspective of filmgoers in this country, it was the arrival in London of Claude Chabrol’s Les Cousins in 1959 that first aroused comment about the French New Wave (his earlier feature Le Beau Serge made the year before would not be shown here until later). Not long after we became aware of another new talented French film-maker when two films by Louis Malle were screened in London, Lift to the Scaffold and Les Amants but, although Malle was born in the same year as Truffaut, 1932, and therefore part of the New Wave generation it would be directors whose names had been closely associated with the magazine Cahiers du Cinema who would be regarded as the movement’s crucial figures. Consequently it was in 1960 that the full impact of the New Wave was felt here, that being the year when, in Chabrol’s wake, we saw Les Quatre Cents Coups and Godard’s Breathless (A Bout de Souffle) as well as Hiroshima Mon Amour which was the work of the slightly older Alain Resnais. Two other names were yet to emerge: Eric Rohmer who was editor-in-chief of Cahiers from 1957 to 1963 and whose first feature Le Signe du Lion of 1959 would reach us belatedly and Jacques Rivette, another Cahiers man, who made a late start with Paris Belongs To Us (1961).
It has been pointed out that the individuals who were seen as part of the New Wave were in fact, very different in their approach to cinema and this is undoubtedly true. Resnais, for example, was decidedly avant-garde in his earlier years as a feature film-maker but in time would become less extreme, while Godard, although highly idiosyncratic and a cutting edge innovator from the outset, would grow ever more so. Others in the group had their own distinctive outlooks. Thus Rohmer’s highly literate pieces would have a visual simplicity that harked back to his love of silent cinema while Truffaut was seen as a successor to the great Jean Renoir. But all of them were influenced by the critic André Bazin a founder of Cahiers and came to believe that most French films of the fifties were increasingly arid and impersonal and cut off from real life. They took the view that the situation could be changed if it was widely recognised that cinema expresses the view of the director (this is the famous auteur theory that gives pride of place to the director above any others working on a film). Thus, in their contrasted ways, each of these directors would attempt in their films to engage with life from a personal perspective.
Les Quatre Cents Coups illustrates this perfectly since it is the story of a boy of thirteen, Antoine Doinel played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, whose situation in the film would echo the experiences of François Truffaut himself. It’s not just that the boy has a passion for cinema shared with his best friend, René (Patrick Auffay), but that Antoine’s bad behaviour – truancy from school leads to his being placed in a juvenile detention centre – duplicate what actually happened to Truffaut. That’s not to say that the film is wholly autobiographical even if Léaud, who reprised the role of Antoine Doinel for Truffaut in later movies, came to be seen as Truffaut’s alter ego. Indeed, Truffaut has said that finding Léaud for the role was a real stroke of luck because the boy’s character contributed to the way in which Antoine emerged on screen. Furthermore, although Truffaut’s name comes first on the writing credits, he has talked of how he collaborated with Marcel Moussy using his knowledge to bring even greater authenticity the screenplay. Thus he has stressed the fact that while only certain scenes draw fully on his own background everything in the film derives from real-life incidents.
Approaching this film fifty years on and thinking of it as spear-heading the world-wide recognition of the New Wave, we may be surprised and perhaps even taken aback by its character. Much of it now feels traditional rather than innovative, and a modern audience may need to adjust to its comparatively quiet and episodic nature. This is not a film with a powerful, fast-moving tale to tell, but a sensitive portrait of the life of a child given insufficient love by his mother (Claire Maurier). Her husband (Albert Remy), to whom she is being unfaithful, is more sympathetic, but not strong enough to stand up for the boy to whom he has given a name. Scenes of home life feature here alongside episodes in school where playing up teachers who patently lack any sense of vocation provide humorous moments (one episode featuring a school run through the streets is Tatiesque). In all of this Truffaut’s approach shows both sensitivity and an absolute refusal to play up the material to manipulate the emotions of the audience: this means that in showing the path on which Antoine is set due to the attitudes of those around him the film embraces a sense of everyday reality in preference to dramatising scenes in the manner of fiction.
The method adopted by Truffaut is indebted to Italian neo-realism of the forties in more ways than one. The emphasis on location shooting is one example although here the format is ’Scope (the term CinemaScope being subject to copyright, the relevant credit refers to DyaliScope). Like De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves this is a film that would lose part of its character had it been shot in colour rather than in black and white. In discussing influences Truffaut has mentioned another great Italian film, Roberto Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero, in which he had found the most persuasively true portrayal of a boy’s life that he had ever encountered. This was the criterion he had in mind in bringing Antoine Doinel to the screen and Truffaut’s love of children explains the presence of one scene here that might have been cut. If dramatic pacing had been Truffaut’s aim, this scene would have been excised since all it does is to show the delight on children’s faces as they watch puppets, the equivalent of our own Punch and Judy. But it’s fair to say that as photographed lovingly for Truffaut by Henri Decae these faces provide one of the most memorable images in the film.
Gentle though the pace is and unforced though the portrait of Antoine’s daily life appears, the film gives us a comprehensive view of the boy’s character and of how he is let down as much by society as by his family, and all of this emerges naturally without ever seeming didactic. Léaud’s exemplary performance reaches a peak late on in a scene between the boy and a psychiatrist where the actor and the character fuse on the deepest possible level. Still left to come is the famous ending. In one sense this is a story that drives the film-maker into a corner because, where drama requires a climax, this tale by its nature lacks any clear-cut resolution. What Truffaut does is a master-stroke in that he finds a way of getting out of the impasse by taking a step in a new direction. His film has been a criticism of those who have failed Antoine Doinel and his last shot is such that we too are implicated as members of the society responsible.
Programme Note by Mansel Stimpson.