Running To The Sea

Diana Hoagland on the educational journey of Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups/The 400 Blows

To begin, this work is intended to be a lasting and great tribute to the late Fran・cois Truffaut, a true film artist, a director of which we have rarely seen or may see again. His work during his short life was vast and most noted for his realistic techniques and refusal to bow to commercial demands. There are virtually no special effects, music is used only in necessary points to highlight emotions that could not be expressed well in words. He was natural and his characters were human, far from perfect models of the age they represented. The films teach and educate, speaking of social ills and triumphs, Truffaut brought the ‘60s and its rebellion in France alive to us.

Les 400 Coups carries many literary as well as social lessons inside it and began with the series of a life of a man named Antoine Doinel, whom we would fall in love with and learn to understand. This movie is played in the classic noir et blanc, black and white, strikingly beautiful because of our forced concentration of the important messages it would send through its utter simplicity. Right away we enter Truffaut’s and later Antoine’s world of their beloved Paris, and as the picture seethes delicately yet rapidly through the Parisian streets we see the symbol of her soul, the Eiffel in the background.

To focus our attentions to the true message of a boy’s life, Truffaut takes us to the classroom, the place of learning, education and socialization. One boy looks up, then to the side, daydreaming, lost in his place. A teacher reverberrates the words, ‘Recess is a reward not an Obligation’, allowing us insight into the strict and formal enviroment in which playtime is a secondary consideration in the long history of intellectualization and pride within France. To help us identify with the frustration of traditional lecture learning, we are directed to see one boy in front continuously ripping out pages from his notebook and the Prof answers to all, ‘What will France be like in 10 years, I’ve known Morons but they didn’t show it, they hide in their corner’. He is reflecting on the changing social mores of the country and the expression through its youth which disrupts and frightens his image of his nation and its future.

To illustrate the changing situation of family life, he takes us next to Antoine arriving home alone. Having his own key, he begins to start the fire for cooking dinner, sets the table, takes some hidden money and, settling down like a little man, begins writing. For a few moments, the child has his own life, broken up by the sudden arrival of his mother from her day job. The mood of the scene is changed by the business of Mom scuttling around scolding the disobedient little man for forgetting the shopping list and sending him out to correct his mistakes. Father arrives and to set the balance of the strict and modern mom, makes jokes and shows his passion for the auto races, the traditional roles are flipped all around, and modern individuality emerges.

Focus centres in on the character, on Antoine Doinel, a boy, a thinker, rebel, independantly refusing to follow the status quo, a ‘writer to be’. Truffaut uses the feeling of stop motion pictures to help us see each move as it transforms before our eyes, arial view, screaming, so much noise, Antoine smiles, significantly at ease. This impression is given even when he gets disturbed when he and his friend have skipped school only to find his mom kissing another man, his friend, as if seeing this mental disturbance in Antoine replying in simple comfort, ‘So you’re safe’. But to show the uncertainty of safety, Truffaut introduces a little boy from school hiding behind the tree eyeing the rebels outside. Dad tells him, ‘Mom will be staying late for work tonight’.

The father plays a role in instilling hope in Antoine and helping to keep the family together. Antoine oftens lays down, looking up and smiling, daydreaming, undisturbed by the chaos around him. All messages are delivered by either word or action, clear and distinct, adherrant to the notions of Realism. Mom sneaks in to shot hiding her secret, trying to give excuse and then when thinking he is sleeping some true frustration of her young motherhood is emoted as she expresses desire for her own life and freedom. When she states, ‘We’ll put him in an orphanage, so I can have some peace…He’s capable of anything’, she is overtly threatened by his own independance and lack of traditional dependence on the woman who bore him.

Antoine gets caught for skipping school and decides to vocalise what’s really been lying dormant in his heart. ‘After this, I can’t live with my parents anymore, I’ve got to disappear (disapearing being the way to individual freedom)… I want my own life. I’ll write them a letter. Antoine runs away and to show the naturalness of what running away is really like, Truffaut focuses on the frustration of trying to find comfort and safety outside the home. Nothing seems to go right, it’s hard and mentally and emotionally trying for the young boy. He simply looks for something to sleep on, grabbing the nearest bags to use as a mattress. But men come to work so he has to go, stealing a bottle of milk to have something to drink, tey having to hide in a corner to conceal the theft. Truffaut shows his fear and desperation by focusing in on how quickly he drinks the milk. The little good boy must become a thief to survive.

He makes the city his home, he starts his running from here to there, washing himself in the city fountain. He goes to school. Mom comes for him showing her parental concern publically. She wants an explanation for his letter, needs self confirmation she is a good mom, tries to repair, tells him to write in French, win and she will pay him. ‘Let’s share another secret,’ she says, indicating they already had one. ‘I will pay you 1,000 Francs if you are in the top five in your next French essay, but don’t tell your father.’ Antonie looks in dismay, now the little good boy becomes a liar.

The music played as the boys go out for a school field trip is light and fluttering and the camera angle again aerial, looking down on the actions, capturing childhood moments and innocence. To refocus to a more serious scene and message, Father comes home angry. ‘Where is my Michelin guide ?’, and Antoine builds a shrine to Honore Balzac, a great French author (French being important as being French is a focus of this film). The focus on the French sense of national pride and Parisien pride in particular is pronounced by Antoine’s mom when she breaks up the tension by stating, ‘What’s playing?’ The answer : ‘Paris is Ours’, and father interrupts to speak of Antoine’s burning shrine. ‘But the Gaument Theatre doesn’t like Arsonists!’ Simply brilliant Truffaut, so many hidden indications.

In another scene that helps develop the character of our Antoine Doinel, we see him smoking and reading Honore de Balzac, the focus on Antoine’s understanding and relating to Balzac, Antoine contemplating his words with the cigarette thought of a true writer and then honoring him by pinning up the picture of Balzac having his hand spread across his chest in allegiance. Back to school, and the essay contest, ‘The Composition Trimestrielle de Fran・ais’. The class are told to describe a major event they witnessed and which concerned them personally. Antoine realizes his ‘Eureka’ in true Balzac fashion, ‘the death of my grandfather’. We hear his thoughts in narrative.

Further illustrating the French system of social education, Prof declares, ‘I’ll show you who makes the laws here (authoritarian), don’t try to use the laws against me !’. Every time Truffaut wants to indicate adventure and escape, he speeds up the moving of the camera and the accompanying music, again simplific but real. Focus comes up on an another common feeling in modern families and the emergence of feminine individuality. When Antoine’s best friend R・ne is speaking with his own father, R・ne’s father tells him quite poignantly, ‘She makes sure her hours never coincide with mine, she must be up to something!’ All these different moves show the connection of the different parts of life and how we move rapidly between them.

Antoine’s true dissention begins when he and R・ne decide to steal his father’s typewriter from his office to sell in order to gain money for the boys to make their own business and independance. When no one buys, they decide to return it and move on to the next thing, but they get caught. The result is that the father turns Antoine over to ‘The State’. They go to the police and father charges child. ‘I give up on you, you are another person’s problem now.’ The significance of all this is that viewer is asking themselves, ‘What did Antoin really do? What made him such a problem for his parents ? Was it his own rebellion, or their personal need to be free of responsibilty of him?’. Again a new problem with a new generation of parents in a changing world revealed. Bravo,Truffaut!

Police and father speaking as if Antoine wasn’t even there, ‘We can’t talk to him, his minds elsewhere’ (indicating going against the typical way of life, free spirit). ‘If you could put him up somewhere under surveillance (he needs to be reformed, to be brought back to be like ‘everybody else’). The answer from the policeman: ‘We have new mental methods, you’ll have to ask for a parental correction, so Probational Education (robotization) can take take charge of him.’. ‘What’s this?’ asks the viewer. ‘Are they really signing that poor kid away because he thinks outside the box?’ It seems to be the making of a proposition, a deal, quick solution like a car that needs an engine repaired or oil changed.

The boy, now in the setting of a real jail, the criminal he is made to be, he signs without any fight the declaration of his actions, but for him its just another event that he is partaking in. Antoine is delivered to the cage, the sad small excuse of a prison cell, and he sleeps. Someone random speaks like in real theatre motion as if reading the thoughts of all: ‘I’ve seen dirtier, I’ve seen cheerier (indifference).’ They get sent off in the police car for the real internment, quiet thinking, music matches his unforeseen happiness of a new adventure, a stage in his life, flowing, imagination, city lights, but tears begin falling down his cheeks. Not knowing isn’t easy.

They check in, belt, shoelaces, emptying of their pockets, oh those dangerous boys, you feel the sarcasm. Tunnel vision by the camera, the long corridor, cement walls, Antoine covers his mouth in disbelief, he couldn’t have imagined it. He is narrowed in on in his cell, he begins wrapping his own cigarette, ascension into the little forced manhood. The examination. Will they keep him? The pyschiatrist begins speaking and questioning mom, ‘Is he left alone on weekends? (could you be responsible ?), And your husband, is he the father? (who’s responsible?)’ ‘No, he married me when the boy was a baby-very honorable’ (ah, so he is yours). ‘I shouldn’t have said that’, answer, ‘Au Contrairre, I think we should send the boy to an observation center’ (we’ll take him off your hands, you will be free). She smiles innocently, ‘One near the seashore’ (she really doesn’t realize what she is doing).

Madame, ‘we don’t run vacation camps’, ‘We’ll keep him 2 or 3 months while I investigate the case’ (he realizes there is much to this story, a confused society, where and to whom to blame?). Truffaut gives us the striking feeling of what happens when these kids are locked up and thrown away. He brings a dramatic and slow angled focus in on the sign, it is large and clear, like entering into a strange new passageway, ‘Centre D’Observation Mineurs D・linquants’, and in English, ‘Juvenile Deliquency Center’. We are shown first a big forest and a Villa where they will be staying, and then the prison yard. A boy approaches Antoine and sets the mood. ‘What you in for?’ (indicating criminality, jail) ‘I swiped a typewriter,’ he answers, not very smartly, ‘they’ve all got seriel numbers’ (indicating an intentional criminal knows how to not be caught).

The scene changes to another part of the yard, focusing on the real problem, Antoine is not really a deliquent, a boy is rubbing a white statute and he speaks to us as children do, in an indirect message for what is really wrong. ‘At home, every time I’d cry, my dad would imitate my crying with his violin, just to tease me. One day I got fed up and I slugged him’ (was he pushed, who is responsible, the real criminal?). Truffaut aids in understanding what he is really saying by taking the camera to a sharp angle up to the beautiful and innocent mother and child of the statute, Venus and Cupid, the one which softens all our hearts and then we listen in on another conversation in response to the last. ‘I‘d kill my old man if he did that’ (shows how most of the locked up and blamed children almost never do the worst they could).

To show the reeducation and reform efforts, boys are kept marching in military straight lines-formation-order-discipline-shape up. Other kids are seen looking on at them protected by being locked in themselves (stay protected from the rebellious thoughts of the bad boys). Truffaut shows repeated clips of the kids standing in strict lines as attempts of control are enforced. Everybody must wait their turn. Here is a classic scene which must have had a great significance for Truffaut because in a later film in the Antoine series, he refers back to it as one of his memories. He is asked to bring his bread and plate to the guard, does so, placing it down as the guard holds up his hands and asks him to choose one. He then takes his watch off and slaps Antoine, but the boy just walks away, no tears, just stiff indifference. He has learned to just take it, lying patiently till he can get out of this.

A later moment is also quite striking in the film’s many lessons for us. We see the boys catch a glimpse of another boy caught and locked up in solitary confinement for attempting to run away. They question him about it and he replies with a smile, ‘I’d do it again, for another freedom adventure’. This would strike up the fire in Antoine to do the same. Here we see how children survive such situations, and the question is ‘who is playing who?’ An unknown boy gives advice to Antoine while they sit alone on a bench, advice on how to best deal with the Psychologist, The Gatekeeper. Firstly, if she drops a pencil, pick it up without looking at her legs or it’ll get into your file (sexual perversion). Second, about your ‘File’… It says what They think of you, the Judge, doctor, even your parent’s neighbors (keeping tight watch of society and the key he is telling him is that it is what ‘THEY’ think of you, not what you necessarily really are). The boy tells hims that he knows his own file – ‘my heart is fully aware’ (showing that kids really know more than they are given credit for). Finally, what if he says some nonsense? Answer: ‘You’ll go to the booby hatch and that’ll send you right around the bend' (you will be locked up forever so be careful).

Next, Truffaut really askes the viewer to look deeply at the real problems at hand by letting us listen in directly on Antoine telling his life story. We hear his voice in ways we didn’t before when he was just letting others do what they want to him. He is realizing he must fight for himself. Straight away we respect him, we have to, he is completely honest, no hidden motivation. He is asked, ‘Why did you steal the typewriter?’ ‘I couldn’t sell it, I didn’t know what to do, I was scared, so I took it back, I don’t know why?’ He admits to stealing money from his Grandmother but he explains that his mother would always go through his pockets and on finding the money took it herself and made him confess the crime. She took the book she gave him and sold it. So much is done to children by the mitsakes of their parents, and when the children do the same, that which they learned, they are blamed. Where is the fairness?

Towards the end we see a parent’s visit day. Antoine’s mom comes, but she has already mentally and emotionally left him. She is cold, and when his real friend R・ne comes to see him, he is denied entrance. The irony… Obviously, Antoine realizes his own life has begun independently and prematurely, but he accepts, and we know by the amazing ending where we all route for him and want him to win, Truffaut has succeeded in giving us a real hero. To brillantly close the film, we see the gentle beauty of Antoine running away, keeping running till he hits the sea. Antoine looks out and we see his eyes, his heart. Nothing is said, the art takes care of it. We wait for the next, and a series is made.

© 2007 Diana Hoagland, aka La Fleur Sacrée

© Miwsig