400 Blows (Les 400 Coups) (DVD)

Synopsis: A young boy tackles the struggles of growing up, parents, the law and the school yard Francois Truffaut has to be one of my favourite directors to ever emerge from the French New Wave or in fact french cinema as a whole. Every film he makes balances the fine line between story telling and art that directors like Godard would sometimes miss calculate. His debut feature, Les Quatre Cents Coups, is one that he has never surpassed though in my opinion and only because it is so brilliant and considering the man went on to create other such masterpieces with Juelz et Jim and The Last Metro, it is only a testament to his brilliance that this is his finest ...  Read the complete review

If you're a fan of cinema in any major way, you'll be familiar with the French New Wave (aka Nouvelle Vague), a cinematic movement of the 1960s that rejected the classical Hollywood paradigm of conventional narrative, of simple, action packed stories with straight, simple steadicam direction. Francois Truffaut and his contemporaries, such as Jean-Luc Godard, wanted to challenge this Hollywood way of making films, and did so in a huge way with films such as The 400 Blows. Antoine is a young boy who, like many picaresque protagonists of works of the French New Wave, is going through an existential crisis. His parents frequently argue, and at school he acts out ...  Read the complete review

The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups) was made in 1959 by Francois Truffaut and is widely acknowledged as one of the great French films in cinema history. It was part of the French New Wave and influenced generation upon generation of film makers and film goers alike. Truffaut based the story on his own early life and it is a realistic and touching story which has you gripped from the opening scene of a car speeding through Paris. The story is about Antoine a young boy based on Truffaut who is growing up in Paris and due to his personal circumstances possibly heading for a life of crime or failing. He is seen as an outsider and a troublemaker by ...  Read the complete review