Four Hundred Strikes
| Roger Ebert
Of all teenage stories, François Truffaut Rufus' Four Hundred Strikes (1959) is one of the most moving. The film is based on Truffaut's own early life, showing how a witty boy who grew up in Paris rushes into the world of crime. Adults see him as a trick-or-treater, but we were able to share a moment when he lit a candle to Balzac's shrine in his bedroom. The film's closing shot is familiar: the camera zooms in, freezes, and the boy looks straight into the camera. He had just escaped from confinement and was walking on the beach, between land and sea, between past and future. This was the first time he saw the sea.
Antoine Doinel, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, has a distinctive seriousness, as if he had endured inexplicable ills long before the story unfolded in the film began. emotional trauma. "Four Hundred Blows" is the beginning of a long-term cooperation between actor Leoder and director Truffaut. The two continued in the short film "Antoine and Colette", the feature film "Stolen Kiss", "Marriage Life" and "Love Run". the role of Antoine. Each of these films has its own merits, "Stealing Kiss" is one of Truffaut's best works, but "Four Hundred Blows" stands out for its concise style and rich emotion.
This is Truffaut's first feature film and one of the pioneers of the new wave of French cinema. We sense it was Truffaut's heartfelt work, and he dedicated it to the prestigious French film critic Andre Bazin, who, when Truffaut was at a turning point, dedicated the fatherless young man Shelter under his own wings helps him escape his turbulent life and embark on a career in filmmaking.
"Four Hundred Blows" rarely does anything to create a certain effect, every detail is to make the final scene more impactful. The film shows us Antoine as a teenager, living with his mother and stepfather in a cramped apartment without an elevator, and having to squeeze past others to get in and out. His mother (Claire Marielle), a blonde who likes to wear tight tops, is distracted by a life of poverty, a troublesome son, and an affair with a male colleague. His stepfather (Albert Remy) is a decent, easy-going, stepson friendly, but there is no deep bond between the two. Both parents are rarely at home and have no patience to care for their children. They judged his character only by his appearance, or they listened to the small reports of those who misunderstood him.
At school, Antoine was labeled a troublemaker by teachers. His luck was very bad. As soon as the calendar of sexy beauties circulated by his classmates arrived in his hands, he was caught by the teacher. He went to the corner and stood up, but he made faces at his classmates and wrote a little poem on the wall. The teacher punished him for writing various variations of this disrespectful piece, so he couldn't finish his homework, and because he didn't want to go back to school empty-handed, he simply pretended to be sick and played truant. The second time he missed school, he said that his mother died, but she showed up at school well and was angry, so he became a liar.
On the other hand, we see Antoine engrossed in reading Balzac in the little alcove that served as his bedroom, the writer's account of the world in a way that shaped France's perception of itself as a nation . He loved Balzac so much that his teacher asked him to write an essay about a major event in his life. He wrote "The Death of the Grandfather", almost completely copying Balzac, because the latter's words had already been imprinted in his mind. However, this composition was not regarded as a tribute to Balzac, but was regarded as plagiarism. This time, Antoine's troubles became more and more serious, and the situation took a sharp turn. He stole a typewriter in partnership with a friend, but couldn't get it to work. When he returned it, he was caught, and he was sent to a juvenile correctional facility.
The scene where Antoine's parents dump him into a social institution is the most heartbreaking scene in the film. The parents looked sad when talking to the staff of the juvenile detention center, apparently thinking that the child was hopeless: "Even if he returns home, he will only run away." So the police registered Antoine and put him in custody. room, and then stuffed him, along with prostitutes and thieves, into a police car and drove through the dark streets of Paris. He looked out through the iron bars, and the face was like a young hero in Dickens's writings. The same expression is repeated in other parts of the film. The picture is always black and white, the background is always Paris in the freezing season, and Antoine always puts up the collar of his coat to resist the cold wind.
Truffaut's film is not an elegy, nor is it an outright tragedy. The title of the film "Four Hundred Strikes" itself is a common saying, meaning "to make trouble", and there are many humorous places in the film, such as the following wonderful scene: the camera looks down on the street, and I see a PE teacher leading the way. The boys ran through the streets of Paris, and the students slipped away one by one, leaving the teacher running ahead, followed by two or three boys. The happiest scene in the film comes from a foolish thing Antoine did: he lit a candle for the statue of Balzac, but set the little cardboard shrine on fire. Fortunately, his parents put out the fire. Although they were angry, they finally forgave him once. The whole family then went to the cinema, talking and laughing on the way home.
The scene of going to the cinema appears many times in "Four Hundred Blows", accompanied by the picture of Antoine looking up at the screen with his serious face. We know that Truffaut himself always slipped into the cinema when he got the chance when he was young. There is a scene in the film in which Antoine steals a poster of the star as he walks out of the theater with friends, a scene later referenced in another of Truffaut's films. In Day for Night (1973), in which Truffaut himself plays a film director, a flashback captures the character's childhood memories of sneaking down a dark street to the door of a theater as a teenager , unveiled a still from Citizen Kane (1941).
Francois Truffaut has repeatedly said that movies saved his life. The film made the once-mistaken, mischievous student find his life's pursuit. With Bazin's encouragement, he became a film critic and wrote the film before his 27th birthday. Many people believe that the French New Wave marked a watershed between classical and modern cinema. If so, then Truffaut is probably one of the most popular modern directors, and his films can feel the deepest and fullest of filmmaking. passion. He likes to explore the special effects in old movies, typical examples include the circle-in and circle-out shots in "Wild Child" and the narrative techniques of other films; he also likes to pay tribute to the masters, "The Bride in Black", "Cheating Marriage" " can see the shadow of his idol Hitchcock.
Truffaut died of a brain tumor at the age of 52, an untimely death, but he left behind 21 films in his short life, not counting short films and screenplays. "Pocket Money" once again showed the school life that he remembered vividly, showing students younger than Antoine Duinel, and recalling when the hand of the wall clock was a little bit closer to the end of get out of class , the unbearable tension in the classroom. Even in the hectic period of making one film a year, he still finds time to write and critique other films and directors; he even did a lengthy interview with Hitchcock, discussing the latter's work part by part, Well, based on the interviews, he wrote a classic conversation record.
One of Truffaut's funniest and most memorable works, The Green Room is based on Henry James' short story "The Altar of the Dead," which describes how a man and a woman are so intensely yearning for their deaths 's lover. Jonathan Rosenbaum believes that "The Green Room" may be Truffaut's best work, this film is Truffaut's tribute to director centralism.
Created by Bazin and his adherents (including Truffaut, Godard, Resnais, Chabrol, Rohmer, Mahler), director-centrism asserts that the true author of a film is not the studio, Not a playwright, not a star, not a genre model, but a film director. If the characters in The Green Room represent the great directors of a bygone era, then perhaps Truffaut occupies a shrine there today too. Let's imagine this picture: Antoine Doinel's soul is lit by a candle before Truffaut's altar.
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