1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die: #9
Okay, I am really glad I was able to find this one subtitled. I know it's nowhere near as obscure as 1900 or The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin, but it is much older than either of those, which could quite easily have been a recipe for disaster.
Thankfully, it wasn't, which is great because I really didn't feel any great loss at not being able to cover either of those two aforementioned films; I mean, I'd never even heard of either of them, but The 400 Blows? Come on, I was a film student until very recently. I've probably seen that final shot more times and been forced to put more thought into it than my own reflection.
And I'm happy to say that although it could have easily borne the burden of me getting sick of it, I didn't. I certainly think it's a little overrated for reasons I'll get into in a bit, but all in all I do believe that it deserves its place in this collection.
I feel like in some ways this may have been a progenitor of the "nothing film" I've railed on in the past, where writers (for some reason unfathomable to me) think it's genius to write a film with no real plot for the sake of realism. And to be fair, that may have had some merit once. As in, literally one time. The first time someone did it. I don't know when that was, but regardless, I don't see the point in doing it more than once.
I don't think it would be quite accurate to label this a "nothing film", but it definitely has some of the same DNA, such as scenes that don't really add anything to the plot and instead focus on the tone and setting, an ending that feels less like a conclusion of the narrative and more like it's just been cut off, and focusing on working-class characters.
The reason I like this film is because it feels as though it has much more of a purpose behind these things, namely to give the sense of showing a chapter in Doinel's life (I suppose that there being a few sequels to this does retroactively help with this feeling though), and the ending feels more like a cliffhanger than an arbitrary point where they ran out the budget.
Plus, this film didn't just straight up forget to have a plot, and what do you know? That makes it much easier to make your viewer give a single toss about the character they're watching! Who'd have thought?
And on that note, I find Doinel to be a pretty compelling character, even if a lot of his motivation/backstory is only revealed right at the end, which does feel like a bit of a missed opportunity. And if there's one thing I'd say this film does near flawlessly, it's how it depicts childhood, specifically that feeling during childhood where you're convinced that all the adults are out to get you. Plus the performances are all incredible, including all the kids.
I do think that some of the dialogue sounds like an adult's words coming out of a child's mouth, and it would have been nice if the whole subplot of Doinel's mother cheating actually went anywhere...and I guess you could argue that some scenes are a little pointless, but putting that aside, this is an absolutely gorgeous look at someone's childhood.
It's also really well directed and shot, proving that Truffaut knew what he was talking about when he coined the auteur theory, and has a very unique soundtrack, which I don't usually see people bring up in relation to this.
So you know what, this is the second film from the 50's in a row that I do get the hype for. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised when most of the big budget, studio produced films I'd seen from that time weren't all that great. Maybe not much has changed after all.
Okay, I am really glad I was able to find this one subtitled. I know it's nowhere near as obscure as 1900 or The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin, but it is much older than either of those, which could quite easily have been a recipe for disaster.
Thankfully, it wasn't, which is great because I really didn't feel any great loss at not being able to cover either of those two aforementioned films; I mean, I'd never even heard of either of them, but The 400 Blows? Come on, I was a film student until very recently. I've probably seen that final shot more times and been forced to put more thought into it than my own reflection.
And I'm happy to say that although it could have easily borne the burden of me getting sick of it, I didn't. I certainly think it's a little overrated for reasons I'll get into in a bit, but all in all I do believe that it deserves its place in this collection.
I feel like in some ways this may have been a progenitor of the "nothing film" I've railed on in the past, where writers (for some reason unfathomable to me) think it's genius to write a film with no real plot for the sake of realism. And to be fair, that may have had some merit once. As in, literally one time. The first time someone did it. I don't know when that was, but regardless, I don't see the point in doing it more than once.
I don't think it would be quite accurate to label this a "nothing film", but it definitely has some of the same DNA, such as scenes that don't really add anything to the plot and instead focus on the tone and setting, an ending that feels less like a conclusion of the narrative and more like it's just been cut off, and focusing on working-class characters.
The reason I like this film is because it feels as though it has much more of a purpose behind these things, namely to give the sense of showing a chapter in Doinel's life (I suppose that there being a few sequels to this does retroactively help with this feeling though), and the ending feels more like a cliffhanger than an arbitrary point where they ran out the budget.
Plus, this film didn't just straight up forget to have a plot, and what do you know? That makes it much easier to make your viewer give a single toss about the character they're watching! Who'd have thought?
And on that note, I find Doinel to be a pretty compelling character, even if a lot of his motivation/backstory is only revealed right at the end, which does feel like a bit of a missed opportunity. And if there's one thing I'd say this film does near flawlessly, it's how it depicts childhood, specifically that feeling during childhood where you're convinced that all the adults are out to get you. Plus the performances are all incredible, including all the kids.
I do think that some of the dialogue sounds like an adult's words coming out of a child's mouth, and it would have been nice if the whole subplot of Doinel's mother cheating actually went anywhere...and I guess you could argue that some scenes are a little pointless, but putting that aside, this is an absolutely gorgeous look at someone's childhood.
It's also really well directed and shot, proving that Truffaut knew what he was talking about when he coined the auteur theory, and has a very unique soundtrack, which I don't usually see people bring up in relation to this.
So you know what, this is the second film from the 50's in a row that I do get the hype for. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised when most of the big budget, studio produced films I'd seen from that time weren't all that great. Maybe not much has changed after all.