Response to The 400 Blows.

The beauty of The 400 Blows is its simplicity. The movie begins with opening credits that feature a beautiful look of France. A look that is almost idyllic as the camera pans throughout the streets capturing every iconic statue and the beauty of the buildings. This gives the audience the impression that the tone is going to be an uplifting one.  Yet once the film actually begins we see the main character being punished for something he didn’t do only to go home and to be yelled at his mother for not buying flour. Even though he has set up the dinner table, got the fire started, and began his homework without being told to. This shows us the helplessness that kids feel when no one treats them with love and respect. Rather the adult are just being worried with whatever is going on in their lives. With the film in deep focus it shows us that there is this feeling of depression because Antoine isn’t getting what he needs from the adults in his life. It shows us that he is there but would rather be anywhere else, and he attempts to find that freedom many times. Yet we see his efforts are in vain more often than not which leads him to steal.

                This is when we really see the tables turn, when the children symbolically become the adults and the adult symbolically become the children. Antoine begins to steal when he ran away from home and the first thing he steals is a bottle of milk that he hides as if it were a bottle of alcohol. He then steals a type writer from his father’s company and gets caught trying to put it back when he couldn’t sell it.  This and many other events got Antoine sent to the police for punishment because his parents wanted nothing more to do with him. So he goes form one prison to the next continuing to struggle for freedom and trying to fit in. I honestly thought he was giving the reform option a try and maybe he was until his mother came to visit breaking the news that his father wanted nothing more to do with him.  He then escapes to only question what freedom entails and we see that in the freeze frame that ends the film.