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Sunday 14 April 2019

Day 351: The 400 Blows

Watched this classic of the French New Wave tonight after work. It was gorgeous, lively and exuberant yet poignant as well, an evocative tale of childhood on the cusp of adolescence, a coming-of-age tale about a boy in Paris in the late 50s who is in some ways utterly typical in his adventures -passing risque pictures in class, skipping school, and avoiding homework - and in others more troubled.

Directed by François Truffaut, and starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as the young Antoine Doinel, it is filled with wonderfully and subtly observed moments - Antoine lazily going through his mother's possessions while she is out, pretending to be asleep when his parents come through the room in which he sleeps at night, listening to his parents arguing in the next room.

It's got a beautiful pace to it, as the gentle rhythms and quotidian repetitions lead Antoine organically down a path of truancy and rebellion. Léaud is so natural, spellbinding, and the directing is peppy, spritely, joyous.

It's the unfolding of the thing that most impressed me though. I recently heard Tarantino talking about his film writing process, saying that if you look at popular films so many of them are not stories but scenarios - you know exactly what is going to happen, and when it is going to happen, and you're paying to be given that thing that you have seen before and that you like. But real stories, in Tarantino's eyes, unfold. The writer doesn't know where they'll go as they're writing them, nor does the audience watching. Real stories surprise you. They unfold, as a living process, the play of order and chaos, and you couldn't have said from the beginning where you would end up, but when you get there, you look back, and it all followed a pattern.

The 400 Blows made me think of this. There's a lot of tenderness in it, and a lot of truth, and it truly develops, moves on - you never know where it's going, but it's always right that it goes where it does.

A lovely film. Rightfully regarded as a classic.

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