120 - The 400 Blows, 1959, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

Sunday, April 30, 2017

120 - The 400 Blows, 1959, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

The French phrase Les Quatre Cents Coups literally translates to "the four hundred blows," with le coup being a blow or stroke or shot or trick.

In the French it is an idiomatic expression beginning with the verb faire.  Faire is an all-purpose verb meaning "to make" or "to do," and it is used in many French expressions.

So here you have something like "to make 400 blows" or "to play 400 tricks."

A proper translation of the expression would be "to paint the town red," "to sow wild oats," "to go wild," or "to raise hell."

Since the title does not contain the verb, you could translate the movie as The Wild Oats.

The Wild Oats

We open by moving down the streets of Paris, celebrating the city to the opulent sounds of Jean Constantin's cheerful score.

The Eiffel Tower peaks out at us from between the grand old buildings and the winter trees as we pass by.

Woody Allen most famously celebrated his city in his masterpiece Manhattan, by showing its sites while playing Gershwin overtures and songs, opening with Rhapsody in Blue.

He would also drive down the city streets and look up at the architecture in Hannah and Her Sisters.

Insert title card:  "Ce film est dedie a la memoire d'Andre Bazin."

This film is dedicated to the memory of Andre Bazin.

Andre Bazin founded the magazine Cahiers du Cinema.  He gathered together a group of young French critics, the young Turks, and nurtured them.  They defined the cinematic attitudes of a generation.  Several of them became filmmakers, who then in turn became internationally and historically important.

For Francois Truffaut, it is even more personal.  Andre Bazin saved his life.  And gave him his life.

This film is, among other things, a fictionalized account of that rescue.

A boy is sitting in class.  The boys are taking an exam.  He takes a pin-up out of his desk and passes it around.

When the pin-up arrives in the hands of young Anoine Doinel, he sits it on his desk and tweaks it with his pen.

When he begins to pass it to the next boy, the teacher sees him and calls him to the front of the room.

And here we have two actors--the student and the teacher--whom we know and love.

Antoine Doinel is played by Jean-Pierre Leaud.

Leaud is about 15 years old when this movie is released.  Truffaut found Leaud in a similar way that Bazin found Truffaut.  Leaud will play Doinel over the next twenty years in four feature films and one short film.  We will see all of them.

We have already seen Jean-Pierre Leaud in Alphaville, Masculin-Feminin, Made in USA, and Weekend, all films by Jean-Luc Godard.  Now we will see him in films by Francois Truffaut.

Leaud is 72 and is still working.  He has two movies listed as coming out in 2017.

The Teacher is played by Guy Decomble.

Guy Decomble is an actor's actor.

We have seen him in The Human Beast (1938) as a guard at the train station; in Jour de Fete (1950), as Roger, a local who teases Jacques Tati's character Francois with his bicycle at the fair; in Bob le Flambeur (1956), as the police commissioner who has a long-standing relationship with the gambler Bob, and who tries to help him since Bob once saved his life; and as the oddball philosopher bookseller in Les Cousins (1959).  Here Decomble is the clueless, put-upon, overly-strict teacher who plays a role in defining Antoine Doinel's youth and the choices he will make in search of freedom.

His character is credited as "Petite Feuille," the French Teacher.  "Petite Feuille" literally means "little leaf" or "little sheet," but is taken to mean "Little Quiz."  A nickname through the eyes of the boys.  And how they feel about him.

Antoine has the pin-up.  He is wearing a black, ribbed turtleneck.  Later he will wear a plaid jacket with the collar turned up.  Wardrobe can be instrumental in defining a character.  It does here.

Little Quiz calls Antoine Doinel forward.

Antoine did not initiate the passing of the pin-up.  He had it in his hands for exactly 11 seconds.  But he was the one who got caught.

He is told to go stand in the corner.  He makes a face at the class for getting him in trouble.  He does not get to finish his exam.

When the Teacher releases them to recess, he makes Antoine stay in the room.

The boys play.  The boys fight.  The boys laugh.

Antoine writes his protest not on the chalkboard but on the wall.

"Here poor Antoine Doinel was unfairly punished by Sourpuss (Little Quiz) for a pinup that fell from the sky.  It will be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

Maybe he has gone too far.

When they return the boys gather to read it.  Little Quiz sees it.  Little Quiz responds.

We have a young Juvenal in our class, though he doesn't know an Alexandrine from blank verse.  Tomorrow you will conjugate in all the tenses of the indicative, conditional, and subjunctive, the following sentence: "I deface classroom walls, and I abuse French verse."

Teachers back then may have been strict but they sure did teach.

Little Quiz will require Antoine to clean the corner while he recites from memory and writes a French love poem on the board.

We see one young boy desperately trying to copy it down, but the ink from his dipping pen leaks and drips all over his exam book.  He turns a page, and it does it again.  He ends up destroying his exam book in his efforts to wipe his hands, clean up the ink spill, and find a blank page.

As the teacher describes the throes of love and passion in the poem, the boys nervously mock and embrace.  Whenever he turns around they are back in their seats writing.

Someone whistles.

Little Quiz loses it.  He yells at the students.  He throws his chalk.  He berates the boys, calls them idiots.  He tells Antoine his parents will pay for his actions.  He denounces them all.

What a class this year!  I've known idiots before, but at least they were polite!  Poor France will be in sorry shape in ten years!

He throws his paper on the floor.  He cannot take it any more.

As the boys go home they talk about their lives.  They surmise that everyone steals money from his parents.

Antoine is a latch-key kid.  He arrives at home alone.  He sits in front of the mirror.  He prepares dinner.

He takes out his pen and paper and begins doing his assignment.  "I deface classroom walls."

But immediately his mother comes home and begins berating him for not having bought flour when he went to the store.  She uses language to belittle him, to make him feel small.  She sends him back out to buy the flour.

He goes to the store to get the flour.  He overhears two women gossiping about childbirth, invoking forceps, cesarean sections, and blood.  He grows sick from hearing it.

He will never get to his assignment.

Things will spiral.

The 400 Blows stands in a tradition of first works, such as James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where the sensitive artist takes control of his life story and defines his own history on his own terms.

The character Antoine Doinel is exceedingly likeable.  We feel for him.  We cheer for him.

He will play hooky from school.  He will go to the fair.  He will steal.  He will steal a typewriter.  He will plagiarize.  He will get into deeper and deeper trouble.

Will someone love him?  Will anyone ever understand him?  Will he find freedom?

Go, Antoine.  Go.