What is special about The 400 Blows?
The 400 Blows was among the first movies made without studio backing to show cinema’s potential for telling personal stories. Half a century later, it’s rarely been matched for its unsentimental and poignant view of childhood.
Why is the movie called 400 Blows?
The original title stems from the French expression “Faire les quatre cents coups”, meaning “to live a wild life”, as the main character does. Literal translation of the expression would be “to do the 400 dirty tricks”.
Where does 400 Blows take place?
Most of The 400 Blows / Les quatre cents coups was filmed in various Paris locations (“Filming Locations”), except for the closing reform school segment, set in Honfleur (“Filming Locations”), a small sea coast town located in the northern French province of Normandy.
What is the turning point in The 400 Blows?
What is the turning point in The 400 Blows? Antoine is imprisoned. What is the setting for Do the Right Thing?
What is The 400 Blows based on?
Les Quatre Cents Coups
Nothing in “The 400 Blows” is pure fiction, then, but neither is the film a wholly autobiographical work. Truffaut was born into a working-class home. His own troubled childhood provided the inspiration for “Les Quatre Cents Coups” (1959; “The 400 Blows”), a semi-autobiographical study of a working-class delinquent.
What was the fate of the protagonist at the end of 400 blows?
[4] Annette Insdorf, François Truffaut (New York: William Morrow, 1979), p. 33: “The 400 Blows ends with the boy escaping from reform school, running toward the sea, and when he reaches the water, a freeze-frame of his face expresses uncertainty.”
Why do you think Truffaut ends the film with the final freeze frame?
What Truffaut and the people working on the film want to leave you with is, they don’t want to dictate exactly how you’re supposed to feel about the experience that you just watched. They leave it open-ended by making this final image somewhat inscrutable, forcing you to figure it out for yourself.