The 400 Blows (1959) - The Criterion Collection

Synopsis

François Truffaut’s first feature, The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups), is also his most personal. Told through the eyes of Truffaut’s life-long cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), The 400 Blows sensitively re-creates the trials of Truffaut’s own difficult childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, petty crime, and a friendship that would last a lifetime. The film marks Truffaut’s passage from leading critic of the French New Wave to his emergence as one of Europe’s most brilliant auteurs.

Cast

Antoine Doinel	Jean-Pierre Léaud
Madame Doinel	Claire Maurier
Monsieur Doinel	Albert Remy
Teacher (“Little Quiz”)	Guy Decomble
Monsieur Bigey	Georges Flamant
René Bigey	Patrick Auffay

Credits

Director	François Truffaut
Screenplay	Marcel Moussy and François Truffaut
Cinematography	Henri Decaë
Producer	François Truffaut and Georges Charlot
Music	Jean Constantine
Editing	Marie Josèphe Yoyotte, Cécile Decugis and Michèle de Possel

Disc Features

New digital transfer of The 400 Blows, enhanced for widescreen televisions
New digital transfer of Antoine and Colette (BOX-SET VERSION ONLY)
Two audio commentaries: one by cinema professor Brian Stonehill and another by François Truffaut’s lifelong friend Robert Lachenay
Rare audition footage of Jean-Pierre Léaud, Patrick Auffay, and Richard Kanayan
Newsreel footage of Jean-Pierre Léaud in Cannes for the showing of The 400 Blows
Excerpt from a French TV program with Truffaut discussing his youth, critical writings, and the origins of Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows and Antoine and Colette
Television interview with Truffaut about the global reception of The 400 Blows and his own critical impression of the film
Theatrical trailer for The 400 Blows
New and improved English subtitle translations

From the Current

SIGHT & SOUND RIDES THE WAVE

Apr 26, 2009

The British film magazine Sight & Sound dedicates its May issue to the fiftieth anniversary of the French New Wave, which it dates to the first screening of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (on May 4, 1959, at the Cannes Film Festival...

“The Face of the French Cinema Has Changed”

by Jean-Luc Godard Apr 21, 2009

Fifty years ago today . . . Godard wrote this New Wave battle cry for the April 22, 1959, issue of the French journal Arts, on the news of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows being selected to represent France at the Cannes Film Festival (thanks to the machinations...

Bazin Season

by Colin MacCabe Dec 21, 2008

André Bazin has a curious status in intellectual life. He is everywhere admitted as the founding father of film criticism and theory in general. The magazine he created in the 1950s, Cahiers du cinéma, has good claim to be the most influential film magazine ever published. And yet at the...

Antoine and Colette

by Kent Jones Apr 28, 2003

On January 19, 1950, the seventeen- (going on eighteen-) year-old François Truffaut attended a 4 P.M. screening at the Cinémathèque française. He met a girl named Liliane Litvin. Truffaut was so smitten that he quit his job in the suburbs and moved back to Paris. According to his biographers Serge...

The 400 Blows

by Annette Insdorf Apr 8, 2003

François Truffaut’s first feature, The 400 Blows (Les Quatre cents coups), was more than a semi-autobiographical film; it was also an elaboration of what the French New Wave directors would embrace as the caméra-stylo (camera-as-pen...