The 400 Blows (1959), the impressive directorial debut of Francois Truffaut, and considered one of the most stunning debuts in film history, is also reckoned one of the important films of Nouvelle Vague or the French New Wave art film movement that began in the late 1950s. Considered to be the early life of the director, it is one of the most intensely touching stories ever made about a misunderstood adolescent in Paris, the teenager boy Antoine Doinel, who struggles with his aloof parents, oppressive teachers, and courts for his petty crime, although he is not inherently bad.

Possibly the first openly autobiographical commercial feature, the film is full of actual incidents from Truffaut’s childhood, including his fabricating his mother’s death as an excuse for truancy, and is dedicated to André Bazin, a renowned and influential French Film critic and Truffaut’s mentor, who died just as the movie began shooting.

The 400 Blows is all about Antoine Doinel, a young adolescent, living with his mother and stepfather in a drab and cramped room, where he sleeps on a couch, pushed into the kitchen. He is a very imaginative kid who wants to go and see other places, but is trapped in an unhappy family life, where his parents have little money and fight constantly.

His mother, a blond, distracted by poverty and disgusted by her troublesome son, prefers tight sweaters, and is having an affair, while the stepfather treats him in a friendly fashion, although not deeply attached to him. He is judged by them on the basis of the reports they receive from others, as they mostly away from home and neither has the patience to pay close attention to the boy.

Antoine frequently runs away from school as he is tormented and punished by the teacher for misconduct and disciplinary problems, like caught with a pinup calendar which was being passed from hand to hand, making faces while standing alone in a corner as punishment and writing on the classroom wall. He attends school without homework for his alleged sickness and after his next absence due to the death of his mother.

However, when she turns up at his school alive, Antoine was branded as a liar. He deeply loves Balzac, and in a school essay on an important event in his life, he describes the death of his grandfather in a close paraphrase of Balzac, quoted from his memory. Unfortunately, his effort was not judged as homage to Balzac, but was treated as plagiarism, which prompted him to finally leave the school, leading to a downward spiral. He desperately wanted to leave home, but as he did not have any money, he stole a typewriter from the workplace of his stepfather which he could not sale and was caught while trying to return it.

The disgusted parents discussed about him with the authorities as a lost cause, and also apprehended that if boy is allowed to go home, he would run away again. He was, therefore, booked in a police station, and spends the night in a cell with prostitutes and thieves. Later, he was sentenced to be placed in a juvenile detention centre and was driven to the home, located near the shore, through the dark streets of Paris, with his face looking out through the bars of the prison van. However, soon he escaped from the centre while playing football with the other boys of the home, and desperately ran like a bird released from a cage to the ocean which he always yearned to see, and reached the shoreline with the collar of his jacket turned up against the wind. This famous final shot of the film, a zoom shot into a freeze frame, caught the boy at the backdrop of the ocean, looking directly into the camera.

The young actor Jean-Pierre Léaud began his career as the embodiment of the French new wave, stunningly portraying the role of Antoine Doinel, the young adolescent in the film and his performance as the alter ego of Truffaut was widely praised both by the critics and the commoners. Interestingly, this was his first collaboration with the director, and later he reprised the role of Antoine Doinel in Truffaut’s short film Antoine and Collette (1962) and three more features, which include Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and lastly, Love on the Run (1979). Although Stolen Kisses is considered one of the best films of Truffaut, but The 400 Blows, with all its simplicity and feeling, is in a class by itself.

Depicted by the famous film critic Roger Ebert as one of the most intensely touching stories ever made about a young adolescent, The 400 Blows, the first feature film directed by Francois Truffaut, is regarded one of the founding films of the French New Wave. The theme of the film is rooted in Truffaut’s childhood, who also had a tough time growing in Paris and was inspired from his own life to make this film. With his creative talent Truffaut aesthetically used imaginative camera angles and editing techniques to paint the portrait of his lost early years in the harsh French society, victimized by unreasonable parental priorities and an unjust system for dealing with juvenile offenders. It is evident that the film is full of several factual incidents from his childhood, including his fabricating his mother’s death as an excuse for truancy.

The 400 Blows, directed by Francois Truffaut, offering a sympathetic and heartbreaking observation of adolescence, created a sensation at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, winning the Best Director Award, and also won several other awards which include the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Bodil Award for Best Foreign Film. It was voted the best foreign film of the year by New York film critics, and was depicted by Bosley Crowther in The New York Times as brilliantly and amazingly unveiling the birth of a new creative talent. Apart from that, it also earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Film and Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay.