The 400 Blows - Criterion Collection
by Fran?ois Truffaut
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DVD details
Actor: Albert R?my, Claire Maurier, Georges Flamant, Guy Decomble, Jean-Pierre L?audDirector: Fran?ois Truffaut
Brand: IMAGE ENT.
Cinematographer: Henri Deca?
Producer: Fran?ois Truffaut
Writer: Fran?ois Truffaut
Editor: Marie-Jos?phe Yoyotte
Writer: Marcel Moussy
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 99 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-05-09
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Product features:
- Francois Truffaut's first and most personal feature film, told from the perspective of the director's lifelong cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel. Sensitively recreating the trials of Truffaut's own childhood, The 400 Blows unsentimentally portrays aloof parents, oppressive teachers, petty crime, and a friendship that would last a lifetime. Available after a long absence as a single
DVD Reviews of The 400 Blows - Criterion Collection
DVD Review: Timeless Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Truffart's masterpiece, everyone should see this film at least once, mere words fail when describing this gem of a film!DVD Review: Affecting Film about Juvenile Delinquency
Summary: 5 Stars
A boy in France isn't interested in school and feels alienated by his parents. His world begins to increasingly be surrounded by like minded friends his own age especially one boy who often accompanies him in misbehavior. Based on true story, Francois Truffaut creates a moving portrait of a child on his way through the juvenile legal system including the detention centers and homes. The ending is especially affecting. DVD Review: Moving and exhilirating
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie announced the talent of Francois Truffaut and still makes a powerful impact 50 years later.
We follow the life of Antoine, a 13-year-old Parisian kid with a knack of getting himself into trouble. He's persecuted in turn by his stupid French literature teacher, his adoptive father and his cold, neglectful mother and winds up in a juvenile institution after stealing a typewriter from his father's office, failing to sell it and getting caught trying to return it.
Antoine is basically not a bad kid but each petty lie and immature stunt gets him deeper and deeper into trouble from a system that seems capable only of punishing and never of understanding him.
We learn that Antoine's mother never wanted him and sees him as a nuisance and a burden; that his adoptive father has no real investment in his success and that the authority figures he meets are interested only in processing him and never relate to him as a person.
This movie is full of exuberant cinemagraphic moments: the camera swoops up and down like a bird watching a clueless teacher taking his class for exercise and having the kids run off behind his back one by one. Antoine and his friend emerge from the Metro and a flock of pigeons explodes into the air. Antoine spends the night alone, surrounded by the cold, unfeeling statues of the Tuileries Gardens.
One notable aspect: every single adult in this movie is an idiot and most are also casually cruel.
The message of this humanistic film is that children need love to thrive. Without it, they are we are victims.
DVD Review: Truffaut almost before he became Truffaut
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are coming late to this pathbreaking film after having seen and enjoyed other Truffaut movies, be forewarned: it's not much like Jules et Jim, or The Bride Wore Black, or even the later Antoine Doinel features. Truffaut spent his childhood watching movies, especially the American studio products turned out by men who became his heroes -- Hawks, Ford, Hitchcock, Ray. In his later films, he unabashedly adapted their styles, combining commercial narrative techniques with his own New Wave sensibility. The result was a type of French cinema that could both entertain and dig deeper than a typical Hollywood vehicle.
In The 400 Blows, his first full-length film, Truffaut opted instead for a documentary style that he felt offered the best chance of telling the truth. (He knew this truth very well, because the story is largely autobiographical.) Elements that typically enhance a studio film and nudge the viewer toward a certain reaction are almost totally absent. The camera "passively" records whatever is taking place, allowing fairly long scenes to unfold in real time. There are few quick cuts or editing that calls attention to itself or to particular lines. The music seems perfunctory, serving more to bridge scenes or otherwise offer continuity (again, in the manner of a documentary) than to prompt emotional responses or underline the psychology of a moment. Dialogue is usually banal, i.e., naturalistic. The characters, even the least sympathetic ones, don't get sorted into heroes or villains. We can sympathize with all of them even as we discern their obvious limitations.
In other words, not a great date movie. Just a courageous first effort by someone who wasn't afraid to translate strong ideas about film into an actual film. I'm glad I finally watched it, although I will probably continue to treasure other Truffaut movies much more.
The Blu-Ray transfer seems superb. Rich variations of black and gray and white. Beautiful visual detail. Wide-screen format, which surprised me, as with Jules et Jim. (Why have I always assumed that the great European film-makers of the 50s and 60s stuck with Academy Ratio?) Technically another great job by Criterion.
Highly recommended, with the implicit caveats noted.
DVD Review: The 400 Blows - Blu-ray Info
Summary: 4 Stars
Version: U.S.A / Criterion / Region A
MPEG-4 AVC BD-50 / AACS
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running time: 1:40:02
Movie size: 29,136,844,800 bytes
Disc size: 42,025,416,450 bytes
Total bit rate: 38.83 Mbps
Average video bit rate: 34.83 Mbps
LPCM Audio French 768 kbps 1.0 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 16-bit
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 1.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio French 192 kbps 1.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
Subtitles: English SDH
Number of chapters: 23
#Audio commentaries
#Rare audition footage (HD - 6m:24s)
#Newsreel footage (HD - 5m:51s)
#Excerpt from a French TV program (HD - 22m:27s)
#Television interview (HD - 6m:51s)
#Theatrical trailer (3m:47s)
#8-page Close to Home booklet with essay
Description of The 400 Blows - Criterion Collection
Francois Truffaut's first and most personal feature film, told from the perspective of the director's lifelong cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel. Sensitively recreating the trials of Truffaut's own childhood, The 400 Blows unsentimentally portrays aloof parents, oppressive teachers, petty crime, and a friendship that would last a lifetime. Available after a long absence as a single-disc release.Francois Truffaut's first feature was this 1959 portrait of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre L?aud), a boy who turns to petty crime in the face of neglect at home and hard times at a reform school. Somewhat autobiographical for its director, the film helped usher in the heady spirit of the French New Wave, and introduced the Doinel character, who became a fixture in Truffaut's movies over the years. Poignant, exhilarating, and fun (there's a parade of cameo appearances from some of the essential icons and directors from the movement), this film is an important classic. --Tom Keogh
The knowing yet innocent face of Jean-Pierre Leaud, the 14-year-old star of The 400 Blows, is the heartbreaking core of Francois Truffaut's most intimate film. As Antoine Doinel, Leaud begins his career as director Truffaut's alter-ego, a young boy neglected by his mother and stepfather who, to cover his absence at school, tells a lie that leads him to run away from home and end up in reform school. There's nothing remarkable or surprising about the plot; the power of this film comes from how completely it draws you into Antoine's life. Antoine is a vivid, natural presence, one of the most compelling collaborations between a writer/director and an actor. The movie seems to capture him as he lives. Antoine endures his parent's indifference, humiliations at school, deprivation and juvenile delinquency--yet the movie never feels pitying or condescending, as if it were trying to rub your nose in Antoine's suffering. On the contrary: His resilience is what grabs you, his refusal to be broken down as he struggles towards a more adult understanding of the world. Truffaut and Leaud made many excellent films together (Day for Night, Two English Girls), including further chapters in Antoine's life (Bed and Board, Stolen Kisses), but none were quite as simple, rich, and devastatingly potent as The 400 Blows. (The title, incidentally, refers not to abuse or anything sexual, but is a French idiom for a wild and unruly youth or "raising hell.") --Bret Fetzer
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