5. The 400 Blows (1959)
Director Francois Tuffaut's 400 Blows, his directorial debut, is still one of his most celebrated works, a staple of any good film school's screening curriculum. Truffaut approached storytelling on film from a very subjective viewpoint, always allowing audiences to fill in the narrative gaps he intentionally left open, which were done so for interpretation. His films reminded us we were ultimately watching a movie, and that it was always art imitating life. The 400 Blows, a thinly veiled autobiographical film, was Truffaut allowing us into his memories as a troubled youth growing up in France. The film is told from the perspective of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) a 14 year old boy- too young to be an adult, and too big to be a kid-stuck in the painful adolescent experience. He fills his empty life with petty crime and causes trouble for himself and his estranged Mother when ever given the opportunity. The film, which helped usher in the French New Wave of film-making, is generally considered Truffaut's finest work in his stellar filmography, and one of the greatest debut films of all time. The film's final shot in The 400 Blows also stands alone as a classic itself. At the film's conclusion Antoine slyly excuses himself from a football game with some friends and ventures off to the beach. There he slowly begins to run towards the ocean, a place he has never been. After dealing with all the harrowing hardships he faces in the film, the character is allowed to have a moment to himself of peace and discovery. The camera follows Antoine in a masterful tracking shot along the beach, and as he turns around from facing the ocean the camera quickly zooms in on him, and he looks directly into the camera for the first time. Truffaut leaves the ending very ambiguous, with some interpreting this as a simple self indulgent nod from the director while others deem it Antoine being forced to face back to the sad reality of his life as he turns away from the ocean. Any way it is analyzed it is undoubtedly a beautiful finish to an equally beautiful film.