French New Wave director François Truffaut (1932-1984) has often sought his inspiration in his own autobiography, like literary authors do. His first feature-length film, The 400 Blows, released in 1959, was based on his own troubled childhood and adolescence.
In the 1950s, Truffaut had already established himself as a vitriolic critic for the magazine Les Cahiers du cinéma and with the young colleagues at that magazine (Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer) he would play a pivotal role in the French New Wave. Truffaut and his collaborators advocated that the director of a film should stand artistically speaking over and above any other person involved in the production - like the author of a novel. It was not a movement with a structured ideology, and in the 60s differences between the various proponents widened - for example between the politically engaged movies of Godard and Truffaut's autobiographical "comedies of manners." But there were also similarities, such as the lack of plot and use of non-professional actors and natural dialogues, not to speak of the low-budget productions.
Truffaut's most representative series of autobiographical films is the so-called Antoine Doinel series, that consists of four feature-length films and one short, and was made between 1959 and 1979. I will here discuss the first film The 400 Blows (made when there was no idea yet about a series).
First the title, because "400 blows" calls up a rather violent image, as of a British boarding school. Nothing could be farther from the truth, it is a wrong translation of the French title which is an idiom. "Faire les quatre cent coups," means "to live without respect for morals or conventions," "to lead a disorderly life." This refers ironically to the hero of the film, Antoine - it is how society wrongly sees him - , and a better title would have been something like "The Wild One," or "Wild Oats."
Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a 13-year-old boy who lives with his parents in a small apartment in Paris. It is so small they are always in each other's way. His tight-sweater wearing mother (Claire Maurier) neglects him as she is too busy with her lover, his uncultured step-father (Albert Rémy) misunderstands the sensitive and artistic boy. Because his creativity is not acknowledged, Antoine starts to rebel against authority and gets into trouble at school, where the teachers are insensitive bores just droning up their lessons. Finally, Antoine runs away from home and goes into hiding at the place of his best friend, René.
The boys need money and steal a typewriter from the office where Antoine’s father works. But they can't sell the heavy machine (it is too obviously stolen and has a serial number) and not knowing what to do with this heap of iron, Antoine tries to smuggle it back into the office. There he is caught by the night watchman. The police is called, and the parents, anyway not very much interested in educating the boy, place him in an institution for delinquent teenagers. At the end of the film, Antoine manages to escape during a game of soccer, and runs and runs, until he comes near the sea, which he sees for the first time in his life, and which gives him a feeling of liberation.
Despite its serious theme, The 400 Blows is full of humor. The film was made on location in Paris, and fun is the shot where the class following the physical education teacher on a jog through the city gradually diminishes as more and more pupils peel off. Also the last long shot is fantastic: Truffaut's camera follows Antoine for several minutes without any cuts when he runs away, until he reaches the beach, does a few steps in the water and then comes running towards the camera. Only then follows a cut, after a zoom-in to freeze-frame of the boy, and this is the end of the film. This shot is famous for its ambiguity.
This charming film proved popular with both critics and the public at large. It won Truffaut Best Director Award at Cannes in 1959 and brought in enough money for Truffaut's own production company, Carosse d'Or (named after a Renoir film) to continue making films and even invest in films by other New Wave directors. It is dedicated to the man who became his spiritual father, André Bazin, who died just as the film was about to be shot. It was highly praised by filmmakers as Kurosawa, Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, Cocteau and Dreyer.
By the way, in 1962 Truffaut briefly continued the story about Antoine Doinel in Antoine and Colette, a short film that was part of a collection of four pieces by different directors called Love at Twenty. Antoine Doinel (again (Jean-Pierre Léaud, who acts as Truffaut's cinematic alter ego in the whole series) works in a factory which makes records. He has lost his wildness and loves music and books. At a classical concert, he sees a nice girl, Colette (Marie-France Pisier), and falls in love with her. But Colette sees him more as a "brother" with whom she can exchange books and records. Antoine in fact gets closer to her parents - surrogate for the real parents he never meets anymore after what happened in The 400 Blows - than to her and at the bittersweet end of the film she goes out with a real boyfriend while Antoine watches TV with her parents.
Feature length films about Antoine Doinel are: Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970) and Love on the Run (1979).