The 400 Blows

The ending is my favorite part of The 400 Blows. Antoine runs away from his problems the entire film, until he escapes actual imprisonment and runs until he can't run any further, literally, to the sea, where he wanted to be in the first place. Then you watch him stare into the camera, "at" you. There's sort of a "now what?" moment--he's got his entire life ahead of him, adulthood only beginning.

This is the film it would have been nice to see as an early adolescent--thirteen or fourteen. On one level, it deals with one of the biggest dilemmas early teenagers are faced with: seeing oneself as an adult and being treated like a child, and the resulting consequences. Antoine reacts by acting out in ways that get increasingly more criminal (all the way from passing pinups in school to running away from a juvenile delinquent institution).

I like the relationship between René and Antoine, and the honest depiction of dysfunctional family life--especially how it can be hidden away in plain sight, with the kids as the ones to suffer for it.

Setting was interesting here: inside their apartment, Antoine and his parents are squished so close together than there's hardly room to breathe, let alone get along. The classroom is also crowded. The journey to the JD institute is very dark. It's only outside that Antoine and René can run effortlessly through the streets like they own them, plus that scene at the end where Antoine runs to the ocean. The camera is further away too, so that the viewer can breathe and watch them run. Is the only solution to run?

What's with the scene about the gym class? And the candle with Balzac? Some weird, author-worship? The Michelin guide?

My final preliminary thoughts are about Antoine's guilt/innocence. The tricky part of this is that he's both guilty and innocent. "Maybe it's genetic," his English teacher said, but that's irrelevant. He's a boy acting out, but no matter if his parents were the King and Queen of England, he would have acted out just the same. He causes trouble in a good-natured (if self serving) way, and then gets himself into more trouble trying to get out of trouble, until the entire situation is one that Antoine can't control. I also think he's a romantic, which didn't practically help him in this case (running away to sleep in a printing factory, escaping to see the ocean). Are we supposed to grow out of romanticism, then? Or get smarter about it?

Speaking of smart, interesting that Antoine's mother tells him that everyone needs to learn to write, but she doesn't seem to care about math or science. Afterwards, Antoine meanders vaguely in the direction of being a writer (Balzac, the typewriter). Is he seeking her approval?