The 400 Blowss By François Truffaut

1621 Words4 Pages

The title The 400 blows doesn’t seem like a movie about a teenage boy. The 400 blows is an inspirational movie directed by François Truffaut about a schoolboy named Antoine Doinel. Antoine has only one friend who is his best friend, Rene. Antoine has a family even though he doesn’t embrace them because they are often seen fighting. His family consist of himself and his parents. The 400 Blows did a great job conveying the emotions the director was feeling throughout the movie because it seemed emotional in several areas. In the document Youth and Entrapment in the French New Wave, it shows the relationship between the French educational system compared to Antoine's imagination. It also discusses how Antoine lies several times in the film and …show more content…

The document Youth and Entrapment in the French New Wave discusses that the educational culture which has a very big influence in the movie. Truffaut also displays the educational system in the movie which perfectly correlates with each other. In the movie the educational system is being displayed in several areas. The young boy Antoine had a picture of a girl in a bathing suit which was being passed throughout the boy’s class. Yet, the teacher catches Antoine and punishes him by making him stand behind the easel. Another example of the teacher disciplining Antoine is when the boy started writing on the easel which was a sign of protest and the teacher finds the poem he wrote. The teacher makes Antoine clean the easel and then gives him homework to write “I deface the classroom walls, and I mistreat French verse” in several tenses. Yet, the young boy has no time to finish this homework at home so he doesn’t go to school the next day. Therefore, he comes back to school the next day and tells the teacher that his mother died so he had to miss school the previous day but in reality he didn’t have time to finish the homework. He is succumbing to lying to the teacher in order to not get in trouble for missing school for a day. An example where the French educational system contributes to the movie is when Antoine turns in a paper by Balzac, …show more content…

He is caught lying several times in this movie mostly by his parents and a few times by his teacher which again goes back to the educational system having an influence in this movie. According to the document Youth and Entrapment in the French New Wave it says “The The 400 Blows is a film demonstrably about youthful subjectivity, it is also haunted by notions of paternity and belonging that can be said to relate to a longer and richer sense of personal, social, and cinematic history.” As said in this document, the film has a young boy who has a brain that is still developing and therefore has no way of making the right choices when said to make them. He may make foolish choices but that is also the way that children grow up. This shows that a child doesn’t have the proper tools to make critical decisions. The child’s friends, in this case Antoine's friend which is Rene influences him several times in this film. Rene is the one who tells Doniel to ditch school with him which shows that friends make a difference in a child’s life. Society tells the boy what is wrong and what is right and even though Antoine knows it, he just wants to have fun because he would be getting in trouble by the teacher anyways. A child needs a balance of having fun and being focused or else they would either be too relaxed and not care or they would be

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