Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) can’t seem to stay away from trouble in François Truffaut’s autobiographical Nouvelle Vague classic THE 400 BLOWS
THE 400 BLOWS (LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS) (François Truffaut, 1959)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Friday, May 29, 2:00, 4:30, 7:00 & 9:30
Series runs May 29 – June 16
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
“They won’t be happy you’re missing school like this,” a man tells fourteen-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud as he’s auditioning for the part of Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. “It doesn’t matter, as long as I’m happy,” Léaud responds. The French New Wave classic marked the first of five films, including one short, in which Léaud played the iconic character, as audiences around the world followed his search for happiness. In The 400 Blows, Doinel is a tough twelve-year-old kid who loves Balzac, has never seen the ocean, and is always getting into trouble with his parents, who treat him more like a problem than a son. He is clearly very smart, but he does poorly in school, where he is harassed by his teacher, whom they call Sourpuss (Guy Decomble). One day when he decides to play hooky, he catches his mother (Claire Maurier) kissing another man, and instead of telling his father (Albert Rémy), he runs away from home, moving in with his friend René (Patrick Auffay), setting off a series of events that lead to a whole lot more trouble and an unforgettable final shot. The 400 Blows is one of the most intelligent films ever made about adolescence, a tender, honest portrayal of a mischievous kid who just wants to be understood. Léaud gives a wonderfully nuanced performance that makes Antoine a uniquely believable and sympathetic character even when he is making some very bad choices. The bittersweet autobiographical paean to childhood rebellion is also about escape of all kinds, beginning and ending with Henri Decaë’s camera racing away alongside Jean Constantin’s glorious score. The Adventures of Antoine Doinel series continued with 1962’s Antoine and Colette, 1968’s Stolen Kisses, 1970’s Bed and Board, and 1979’s Love on the Run, as the world grew up with Antoine, and Truffaut alter-ego Léaud.
Nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar and earning Truffaut Best Director honors at Cannes, The 400 Blows is screening in Brooklyn on May 29, kicking off the BAMcinématek series “Black & White ’Scope: International Cinema,” an eighteen-day, twenty-eight-film festival featuring 1950s and ’60s black-and-white films shot in CinemaScope. The series includes such other Truffaut classics as Shoot the Piano Player and Jules and Jim in addition to five films by Akira Kurosawa, Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad, Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, Joseph Losey’s The Damned, and Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower, a veritable master’s level course in cinema studies.