The Four Hundred Blows (1959, dir. Francois Truffaut) ****/****

Many would say that one of the best films of the French New Wave and of all time is Francois Truffaut's 1959 feature debut, "The Four Hundred Blows".  It was really the film that kick-started the New Wave and has inspired many filmmakers to this very day.  The film would introduce the iconic character Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) who would reappear in a series of other films by Truffaut that would carry on his various adventures and exploits.  This debut feature introduces us to the character and portrays Antoine in an unsentimental, endearing series of vignettes and various mischievous encounters that would solidify the film as one of the best films about young people to ever have been made.
    Right from the get-go we are made aware of Antoine's failure to adhere to the mainstream and his inability to fit into the pre-established norms of his society.  We see him in a classroom where he is unjustifiably made the object of criticism and punishment for something he was not really responsible for.  One of the main themes of the film is the nature of injustice and how Antoine is wrongfully accused and unfairly punished at various times throughout the film both inside and outside the classroom.
   The film is semi-autobiographical and you get the sense that Truffaut put his heart and soul into the film, filling it with anecdotes and memories from his own troubled youth.  Antoine and his friend skip school to go to the movies and are depicted stealing a still photograph outside a theatre, actions that Truffaut was obviously fond of doing as a youngster.
   Eventually, Antoine's parents, at the end of the wits and rope, send him to a boy's reform centre where he will be forced to adhere to even stricter rules and conventions.  Antoine however, will eventually escape and, at the film's end, we are left with the memorable freeze frame of Doinel when he has reached the sea and looks back into the camera.  The look on his face in ambiguous and offers both a hopeful optimism about a new future and a glaring uncertainty about the impending reality of what is to come.  This is truly one of the great films of all time and is a brilliant portrait of the troubled life of an unconventional youth on the brink of adolescence and adulthood.