Four Hundred Strikes: A Wandering Teenage Time Without an Exit

Sincere 2022-03-24 09:01:51

When it comes to the film "The Four Hundred Blows", familiar fans can add countless titles to it, similar to the pioneering work of the French New Wave, the semi-autobiographical film of the film master Truffaut, or from its long takes. Use and scheduling of scenes to boast about the movie.

Of course, all of the above are true. But it is often such a daunting title that makes many fans miss or never have the courage to watch this movie, and it makes countless fans have no courage to talk about this movie. This is what really makes people feel a pity, just because of the false name, but missed such an excellent movie.

The name of the movie is "Four Hundred Blows", which seems to be somewhat unintelligible. But in fact, this comes from a French proverb, which means to slap a disobedient child 400 times so that he can become a good boy. This is basically the same as China's "Huang Jing stick brings out good people". The title of this film is sometimes translated as "Furious Action". If "Four Hundred Strikes" is the beating itself, then "Furious Action" is the reason for the beating,

which means that the teenager is absurd and willful. stage. It can be said that the adventurous and naughty boyhood of the little boy in the movie can be used as the best portrayal of this movie name.

The story of the movie is not complicated either. It takes the growth of the protagonist, the little boy Antoine, as the main plot, and serves as the beginning of a series of films centered on this character by the director Truffaut. After this film, including "Love Run," a total of four films featured it as the main character, as director Truffaut's autobiographical films.

Among the four films, the first two focus on refraction of the life story of the director Truffaut, while the latter two mainly focus on the self-development story of the protagonist of the film. Fans who know a little bit about the director Truffaut can see that the little boy in the film is very similar to his own childhood. , and even entered the reformatory police station.

The story of the film starts from Antoine's exam in class. The classmates pass photos of naked women to each other, but they are found by the teacher on his desk. Although the class was full of mischievous students, he was the only one who was regarded as the most naughty by the teacher because of his bad luck. Although he has a good friend Rene to play with him, the campus life always seems to be unsatisfactory, which makes him hate school life.

As for his family life, it's not so happy either. He lives with his stepfather and mother. Because the house is relatively small, he can only live on a bench in the kitchen. His mother was very strict with him and often bossed him; the relationship between his stepfather and him was more like a friend, but not really affectionate.

He didn't get the care he deserved at school, and he didn't get the warmth he deserved at home, so bored he could only skip classes with his classmates to wander around and go to the cinema to watch matinee movies. He couldn't do what his parents or teachers wanted. After all, these adults didn't take him so seriously.

In order to hide all this, Antoine began to lie. When I go home, I tell my parents that everything is fine in school; when I go to school, I tell the teacher that my mother died, so I can't come to class. He hides his dissatisfaction with life by lying, but at the same time he discovers the ugliness and incomprehension of adults.

For example, when he was hanging out with his classmates, he found his mother kissing a man on the street. His friend told him, then you are finished, you were seen by your mother; but Antoine responded, "It's okay, she won't say it, her man is not my father."

It can be seen that in this family, it is not only Antoine who lied, but also his parents. For Antoine, such a family full of lies and no love made him unacceptable, so he could only escape from life. But when he lied about his mother's death and truancy being exposed, his father's slap in the face of all his classmates made him even more ashamed.

The adults in the movie seem to have never thought about why this happened to the child, but just blamed it blindly. In fact, Antoine in the movie is a smart kid, full of creativity and vitality, but all the adults around him can't give him the care in the process of growing up.

His teacher felt that he was useless and naughty by nature, and always laughed at him, and even accused him of plagiarizing his composition; his mother did not want to accept the birth of this child from beginning to end, and seemed to always treat him as a drag on her life. The only expression of his mother's love for him in the whole movie is to make him hide the secret of her affair. As for the father, grumpy, failed at work, and impatient with children.

The adult world was no longer trustworthy and companionable to him. So he has been so unhappy that he has to run away from home and start his own life on his own. Although it was only a short night, it was brought back. But this night was the first step in Antoine's decision to leave the family.

Sure enough, soon after, Antoine skipped class again and began to hide in the homes of his classmates. The two little boys smoked, drank, and played chess, and they lived a rebellious and happy life. But since then, he has embarked on a crooked path and started a career of stealing. However, it can be said that Antoine did not completely destroy his kind heart in the end.

In the end, because of the failure to sell the stolen goods, Antoine chose to exchange the stolen typewriter again. But it was this choice that made him finally arrested and sent to the Jiaohuayuan. It is a pity that Jiaohuayuan is not a place where children are educated and enlightened as imagined, but another environment that is depressing and terrifying.

So, in the end, Antoine chose to run away. He kept running out, the siren sounded behind him, and the direction he finally ran towards was the direction of the sea. The last set of running scenes in the film can be said to be one of the most classic endings in film history.

Antoine was running on the road. In this 1 minute and 20 seconds of running and filming, there was no music, the panoramic view, and the pure natural environment made us feel more excited about this hard-won short-term freedom.

Then the music played, and after the camera slowly panned across the Seine, it once again aimed at Antoine's back running away in depth. Antoine ran down from the top, ran all the way to the beach by the sea, and played casually in the waves. The camera went from panning to follow-up, and the scene ranged from panorama to panorama.

At this time, the long shot still did not end. In the end, Antoine turned around and walked towards the camera. The shot was pushed sharply, and the whole film was fixed on the close-up of Antoine's face. Antoine's last confused and fragile eyes, Like the Mona Lisa's smile, it has become a world-famous expression.

Other than that, the film's use of the lens can be said to be textbook-level. If you want to analyze every shot carefully, from the first shot of the film following the streets of Paris to the last shot of running, it seems that each shot has its own meaning.

But more importantly, this film is real and sincere, and it truly captures the rebellious psychology of youth, the yearning for freedom and the final confusion about the future. As said at the beginning, this movie is not an obscure, boring movie, but a movie worth watching again and again.

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Extended Reading

The 400 Blows quotes

  • Julien Doinel: The boss is sleeping with the new secretary. She's well-armed, that girl, and she used it to get promoted to executive secretary. She has all the necessary talents for the position.

    [makes a gesture that she has a well developed bust]

    Julien Doinel: Now I'll have to watch out for her. Pillow talk and all that.

  • Julien Doinel: I don't like mysteries!