The Film: Director François Truffaut mined from his own wayward childhood to create cinema's definitive tale of the outsider. The first in a series of movies starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Les Quatre Cents Coups as it is known in its native France, follows Léaud's rebellious Antoine Doinel as he gets in trouble at school, cuts class and generally forges his own path through Paris. Although this is deemed to be one of the forerunning films of the French New Wave, The 400 Blows boasts none of the stylish cuts and narrative mod cons of, say, Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and instead relies on solid story-telling, an edgy breakthrough performance from its lead and, importantly, a central theme of loneliness and misdirection that all audiences can relate to. Stunning. Classic Moment: Yes, the long tracking shot of Antoine escaping from juvie, charging across the French countryside and ending up immortalised in a beachside freeze frame is a belter, but the film's motif of loneliness is never bettered than when Antoine takes a ride on the Rotor, curled up in the foetal position, a withdrawn figure in a displaced and kaleidoscopic sequence.
Shaun is a former contributor for a number of Future Publishing titles and more recently worked as a staffer at Imagine Publishing.
He can now be found banking in the daytime and writing a variety of articles for What Culture, namely around his favourite topics of film, retro gaming, music, TV and, when he's feeling clever, literature.
