A married novelist becomes bored with his apparently perfect home life and pregnant wife, and embarks on a torrid affair - placing the security he yearns for in jeopardy. French drama, written and directed by Francois Truffaut, starring Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claude Jade and Hiroko Berghauer
The release of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows in 1959 shook world cinema to its foundations. The now-classic portrait of troubled adolescence introduced a major new director in the cinematic landscape and was an inaugural gesture of the revolutionary French New Wave. But The 400 Blows did not only introduce the world to its precocious director—it also unveiled his indelible creation: Antoine Doinel. Initially patterned closely after Truffaut himself, the Doinel character (played by the irrepressible and iconic Jean-Pierre Léaud) reappeared in four subsequent films that knowingly portrayed his myriad frustrations and romantic entanglements from his stormy teens through marriage, children, divorce, and adulthood.
