Seemingly in constant trouble at school, 14-year-old Antoine Doinel returns at the end of every day to a drab, unhappy home life. His parents have little money and he sleeps on a couch that’s been pushed into the kitchen. His parents bicker constantly and he knows his mother is having an affair.
He decides to skip school and begins a downward spiral of lies and theft. His parents are at their wits’ end, and after he’s stopped by the police, they decide the best thing would be to let Antoine face the consequences. He’s sent to a juvenile detention facility where he doesn’t do much better. He does manage to escape however.
Andre Bazin, the great cinema theorist, begins his cinema studies by establishing a cinema club in the House of Letters he founded in Paris. Thanks to those who come to the club, new friendships, emerging publications and the effects of those publications, a small movement evolves into the magazine: Les Cahiers du Cinema.
The magazine gives birth to a wave of cinema: French New Wave Stream or New Wave. While Bazin prefers to remain a theorist throughout his life, other writers sit on the director’s chair. François Truffaut is considered a pioneer of the movement with his films. Among his films, Les quatre cents coups (1959) is a work that contains the main lines of the current and makes a name for itself.
Truffaut tells us about his childhood, which is constantly misunderstood in Les quatre cents coups. When we look at the story of Antoine Doinel (Jean Pierre-Leaud) that we watched in the movie, we see that the director is largely similar to his life pattern. This is a small piece of information that will give us many tips for the New Wave stream.
Les quatre cents coups can be considered as one of the best examples for the New Wave, firstly, “The auteur, which tells about its own feelings and thoughts, reflects its own personality to the film with its layout and puts itself into the film as an individual, and differs from other auteurs with its stylistic features.” It is the same thing that happened to Truffaut when Antoine’s father was unknown, he stayed with his grandmother for eight years until his death, and then he accepted a mother and a stepfather who would give him his surname by accepting himself. This is why the New Wave is kept close to the documentary and gives the taste of documentary to the current.
Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959)
Directed by: François Truffaut
Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, Claire Maurier, Georges Flamant, Guy Decomble, Patrick Auffay, Daniel Couturier, François Nocher, Richard Kanayan, Renaud Fontanarosa
Screenplay by: Marcel Moussy
Cinematography by: Henri Decaë
Film Editing by: Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte
Set Decoration by: Bernard Evein
Music by: Jean Constantin
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Cocinor
Release Date: May 4, 1959
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