{"id":12326,"date":"2016-08-10T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T16:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12326"},"modified":"2016-08-08T09:32:30","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T16:32:30","slug":"to-see-or-not-to-see-the-400-blows-and-the-beauty-it-gives-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/08\/10\/to-see-or-not-to-see-the-400-blows-and-the-beauty-it-gives-back\/","title":{"rendered":"To See or Not to See<\/em>: The 400 Blows<\/em> and the beauty it gives back"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The 400 Blows
\n<\/i>5\/5<\/p>\n

Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut\u2019s The 400 Blows <\/i>(1959) is not a film for those just getting home from a night of debauchery; if you\u2019re reading this while you sip gingerly on a cup of coffee, I advise that you turn to the hangover\u2019s best friend, Netflix. This isn\u2019t a film for a casual viddy or for a last-minute perusal.<\/p>\n

The 400 Blows <\/i>is a 1959 black-and-white French film (yes, with subtitles) about a young boy (played masterfully by a 14-year-old Jean-Pierre L\u00e9aud) struggling to grow up in world dominated by domineering adults. But if you can find it in yourself to take the time and use your mind to digest what Truffaut is saying\u2014and how he says it\u2014you\u2019ll have discovered pure cinematic poetry.<\/p>\n

This is a film for people who appreciate the deceptively simple and the silent beauty in the unsaid. For example, Truffaut guides us serenely through the winding, cobbled Parisian streets, and we\u2019re left with the feeling that this film is in a perpetual state of early morning; the streets rarely bustle, but instead lie in wait for Truffaut\u2019s camera to glide down them. It gives the film an intangible beauty that at the same time carries with it the cruelty that can be life.<\/p>\n

That said, The 400 Blows<\/i> is also peppered with humour (following a 14-year-old boy around is guaranteed to produce a few laughs), and often the viewer is swept away in the various hijinks that ensue. Truffaut has a keen eye for boyhood antics, and it makes perfect sense that The 400 Blows <\/i>is semi-autobiographical.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s score\u2014composed gorgeously by Jean Constantin\u2014meshes the poignant and the peppy. There might have been a slight disconnect in the film, as it juxtaposes youthful exuberance and familial strife, but Constantin\u2019s score is able to bring both halves of the film together perfectly. Music is able to much more easily shift from sadness to happiness than a film is because it has no plot restraints\u2014it\u2019s abstract\u2014but when placed alongside the structure of a film, music\u2019s abstraction is able to attach itself to the plot of the film and lend the emotions it evokes to the film\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

The 400 Blows<\/i> is a great-grandfather to modern films like Boyhood<\/i> (2014), where plot is forgone for feeling. Both films follow a boy\u2019s evolution through childhood, and although they tell specific stories of specific people, they\u2019re also able to touch on elements of growing up that resonate with everybody.<\/p>\n

However, like poetry, The 400 Blows<\/i> gives little more than what you are willing to put into it; if you want merely to zone out, I suggest the new season of BoJack Horseman<\/i>. If you want a film that can make you really feel something, The 400 Blows<\/i> is just the ticket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 400 Blows 5\/5 Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut\u2019s The 400 Blows (1959) is not a film for those just getting home from a night of debauchery; if you\u2019re reading this while you sip gingerly on a cup of coffee, I advise that you turn to the hangover\u2019s best friend, Netflix. This isn\u2019t a film for a casual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-august-10-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12328,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12326\/revisions\/12328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}