Dickens A La Francais!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                I cannot believe it took me this long to see "The 400 Blows."  I had no idea what I was missing.  The performances of its leads, including the young Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine Doniel are spot on.  Anyone who has been through adolescence will easily relate, and those on the verge of it should see this film as a cautionary tale of what to watch out for.

                                 Adolescents, in all sorts of ways, act out.   I know I did.  I never drank or smoked, but I was always acting Barbra Streisand, singing "I'm The Greatest Star," or doing hysterical monologues, like Natalie Wood in "Splendor In The Grass."  My poor parents.  Now I understand what they were going through.

                                    Antoine's parents, though wonderfully played by Albert Remyand Claire Maurier, are sub-par.  The father overworks to support the family, while the mother is a tramp, two timing her husband with the boss, and neglecting the boy, because she feels he is too much of a burden.

                                         So, he acts up in school, reminding me of those years when I resented some of the teachers for the way they taught or did not, and feeling I knew more than they did, which I still do. I did not become a juvenile delinquent like Antoine, but I had my meltdowns.  And I had problems with authority!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                             The boy ends up in a reformatory, which is straight out of Dickens, but with a French twist.  The film captures the more austere sides of Parisian life, but there is a poetic shot of boys running through a flock of pigeons, as if foreshadowing "Les Yeux Sans Visage," and the opening has some wonderful poetic shots of Paris, and some interesting, almost noir, camerawork.  I was more moved than I expected to be.  The final shots of Antoine running along a beach , the ocean in the background is beautifully filmed.

                                                I thought the film ended abruptly, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.  The film ends asking its audience the question "So what's next for this boy?"

                                                  Being it is semi-autobiographical I would say the future was bright, for Truffaut emerged as one of our most brilliant filmmakers, despite a troubled past.

                                                    "My only adolescence, my pretty adolescence, my shitty adolescence........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"