The 400 Blows (1959)

Director: François Truffaut

Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, Claire Maurier

A young boy, left without attention, delves into a life of petty crime.

It’s very rare for me to not make a single note during a film’s first 30 minutes. Fact is, there simply was nothing interesting happening, or anything that excited me. For most of these first 30 minutes we watch kids in a classroom. They occasionally cut to show us the home environment of young Antoine Doinel.

At first Antoine’s Dad comes across as a really likeable and cool guy, while his mother is …well, the opposite. During the course of the movie their character actions are reversed, so in that sense I suppose it was good character development. As for Antoine, his character pretty much remained the same throughout the entire movie. Despite what he was going through – and this might sound cruel and insensitive – I didn’t find myself rooting for him. He came across as a trouble maker, and appeared to be enjoying it.

When Antoine hears his parents fight over him one night, he decides to run away, and skips school. Believing school to be a waste of time, he wants to start working to earn a living, but in the meantime he has to steal to get by. Off course, this gets him into a lot of trouble.

Yawn! ‘The 400 Blows’ is an insanely slow paced movie and there truly never is anything interesting happening. The synopsis to this film doesn’t even sound interesting, and the only reason I decided to watch it, is because of its high acclaim. Critics, it seems, do enjoy slow and boring movies. This has been proven to me so many times before. Maybe I just don’t see the significance of the film, but when I watch a movie I want to be entertained. With ‘The 400 Blows’ I was not entertained; I was bored to death. In fact, this is one of the most boring movies I’ve seen in a while.

‘The 400 Blows’ received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay (oh, whatever, yawn…)

In French.

Would I watch it again? Absolutely not.