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French neorealism, in 1959?

This will probably be considered blasphemy in some circles, but this week I finally got around to watching an English dubbed version of The 400 Blows that I have a print of. I was really pretty impressed by the quality of the dub. It seemed totally natural, and it allowed my eyes to focus entirely on the photography. Of course, I still prefer the original French language version, but I got to wondering if any of the home video releases have ever included the dub. I can't find any references to it online.

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This week we're discussing the winner of the French New Wave mini-list.

I finished rewatching this tonight.

Right from the beginning I was amazed at how good the film is. How it manages to be observational but still possess impeccable pace and flow. and I think it's that attitude that suffuses the film so very well. It's a working class attitude, in some ways the same vivre that animates the Pagnol trilogy. Truffaut and Leaud are"in it" so to speak, in the poverty, in the self-perpetuating interlocking systems of unfairness, but with no animus.

Since filmmaking is a craft almost always reserved for upper caste members, all around the world, filmmakers, then, now and everywhen in between have either a clinical distance (L'Enfance Nue) or an authentic or performed attitude of class-distance-of-disdainful-pseudo-sympathy (virtually everyone, everywhere), or if they are like Truffaut, they often either tend to or are forced (by the standards of international cinema sales) to adopt ever more extreme-extremes (City of God).

Something this quietly working class and plain in its protagonist would not be seen as "performing" the right amount of poverty (or any other social issue aspect you choose to take).

That is a round about way of saying that many films with characters and scenarios like 400 Blows rarely don't connect the same way because they are often so over-dramatized because they try to "perform" an "authentic" representation of some social issue stereotype that they think the uppercaste film buyers-distributers and cineaste viewers will want to consume (whilst patting themselves on the back of course).

But it's that quiet, banality of all the little things of their 'not-that-bad' (damn things can still get bad fast) life that make the film so very good. Truffaut does not loath Doinel's apartment nor his neighborhood (not like how Chabrol loathes and or is embarrassed by his hometown), Truffaut clearly loves it, and is not embarassed by it and I think Doinel loves it as well.

What I'm trying to say is that so many of these films of youth with protagonists like Doinel display the existence of the protagonist to be just unrelentlingly miserable. What's so refreshing about 400 Blows is that Truffaut finds unfairness and can portray the miserableness of a bad teacher but still finding life and sparkle in the same breath and scene. It's what gives the film so much vibrancy, that Truffaut simply likes everything around Doinel too much to ever cause his film to fall into the normal approach of over-the-top-everything-and-everyone-is-awful-all-the-time-to-you-kid (Kes). Truffaut even clearly loves the unfair teacher, relishing in his ridiculous, ineffective lessons infusing them with nostalgia and warmth rather then penance and guilt--even when something bad is happening.

Eventually, everything does go pear-shaped for Doinel. but it is impressive how quietly it happens and from so little. and it's amazing that Truffaut manages to give an explanation of how each step Doinel takes seems inevitable without ever making you feel like Antoine is ever really that guilty. The common phrase is that we're "on his side" but I think there is more going on than that. We're not just on his side, we're able to see more than Doinel sees, we're on his side, but we can also see the inexorable invisible forces of culture and society shaping things relentlessly to the inevitable outcomes they are designed to deliver. But done unobtrusively, never with a lecture, you won't know you're learning but you internalize the lesson deeply all the same.

The whole film is so very economical and elegant in its construction and execution. It's an incredible and remarkable achievement. a really incredibly impressive first film.

So I remember reading or hearing somewhere that the freeze frame at the end of 400 Blows wasn't intentional but happened because they ran out of film in the magazine and when Truffaut saw the developed film he decided to go with the freeze frame as the last shot of the film. Can anyone verify this?

I've read the same story myself many times but I'm not sure if I've ever seen a direct quote from Truffaut confirming this.

oldsheperd wrote:So I remember reading or hearing somewhere that the freeze frame at the end of 400 Blows wasn't intentional but happened because they ran out of film in the magazine and when Truffaut saw the developed film he decided to go with the freeze frame as the last shot of the film. Can anyone verify this?

Possibly, but it doesn't make a lot of sense that it was unintentional since Doinel turns and looks directly into the camera before the freeze-frame. How was the shot suppose to continue? Would Doinel walk into a close-up still gazing at the camera? Would he walk past the camera? Would he look at the camera for a moment then continue walking out frame right? Any of these are possibilities, I guess.

What would make more sense is if Léaud broke character too soon (the look back to the camera as in "are we done with this shot yet?") and Truffaut took advantage of the gaffe by freeze-framing on Léaud's eye contact with the camera for effect.

No, it make sense. First of all, it wasn't actually shot as a close-up, they created that in post-production via a substantial blow-up, and second, just because they ran out of film doesn't mean they went for the very last "usable" frame. They could've backtracked it until they found a moment that would've been suitable to make into a close-up, and looking at the camera could easily have been a transitory moment that worked perfectly.

hearthesilence wrote:No, it make sense. First of all, it wasn't actually shot as a close-up, they created that in post-production via a substantial blow-up, and second, just because they ran out of film doesn't mean they went for the very last "usable" frame. They could've backtracked it until they found a moment that would've been suitable to make into a close-up, and looking at the camera could easily have been a transitory moment that worked perfectly.

Not to put too fine a point on this, since I agree with what you're saying here, but saying the camera had run out of film leads one to ask how the shot was originally going to end...and there doesn't seem to be a lot of logical choices once the actor has broken the fourth wall to look at the camera lens. I definitely think that Truffaut made the decision in post-production where to freeze the footage and to do the blow-up; it was an inspired choice and made for a great ending.

Is the latest issue of this blu-ray the same transfer as the 2009 version, or was it restored again?

Morbii wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 1:32 am Is the latest issue of this blu-ray the same transfer as the 2009 version, or was it restored again?

If I remember correctly, the Dual Format release was essentially a repackaging of the pre-existing BD release and new editions of the pre-existing DVDs, and the subsequent DVD/BD releases were split versions of the Dual Format release.

So, yes, the latest version of the Blu-ray is the same as the original BD release. I think.

Does anyone know the name of the Balzac novel Antoine is so taken with in The 400 Blows?

He's accused of plagiarizing La Recherche de l'absolu

Balzac is a frequent reference in Truffaut. Antoine also reads Le Lys dans la vallée in Stolen Kisses, Louis reads La Peau de Chagrin in Mississippi Mermaid, Rodin's Balzac statue figures prominently in Two English Girls, and of course the protagonist of La Peau douce lectures on... Balzac.

Edit: There's also a study of Balzac among the books burned in the old lady's house in Fahrenheit 451. (In the same shot we glimpse Roché's Les Deux Anglaises et le continent, author of Jules et Jim, five years before Truffaut would film it. I seem to remember this kind of thing happening at least another time - I think it may be a character reading La Sirène du Mississippi in one of the films just preceding it.) Truffaut's love of books is all over his filmography.

4K set in July

PECIAL EDITION FEATURES
4K digital restorations of all five films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
In the 4K UHD edition: Four 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and four Blu-rays with the films and special features
New 4K restoration of Les mistons, Truffaut’s 1957 short film, with commentary by Claude de Givray, Truffaut’s then assistant director
Two audio commentaries for The 400 Blows, one featuring film scholar Brian Stonehill and the other Truffaut’s lifelong friend Robert Lachenay
Archival interviews with Truffaut and his collaborators, including actors Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claude Jade, and Marie-France Pisier and cowriters de Givray and Bernard Revon
Video essays by film historian Serge Toubiana for Stolen Kisses and Les mistons
Introducing My Father, François Truffaut, a 2019 interview with Laura Truffaut by filmmaker Daniel Raim
Trailers
PLUS: Essays by Annette Insdorf, Kent Jones, Andrew Sarris, Noah Baumbach, and Chris Fujiwara, and a 1971 piece by Truffaut

Covers by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Oh, wow!
This is awesome news!

Finally! I know this must be new

Introducing My Father, François Truffaut, a 2019 interview with Laura Truffaut by filmmaker Daniel Raim

Anything else?

I could be wrong, but I think everything else was on the DVD set, unless there are additional archival interviews. (I know there were already archival interviews with all of the people listed, anyway.) The Laura Truffaut interview is on the Criterion Channel, for what it’s worth.

A comparison of the same scene for The 400 Blows that come directly from the Carlotta and Criterion websites:

Carlotta:

Criterion:

Can't wait for this! I wonder, will the packaging be identical, or downgraded in some way? I have a feeling that I may still want to hold on to my DVD set...

dvakman wrote: Sun Jun 01, 2025 6:01 pm Can't wait for this! I wonder, will the packaging be identical, or downgraded in some way? I have a feeling that I may still want to hold on to my DVD set...

From the looks of it, it looks to indeed be the same packaging as the original release.

C'est Magnifique!

Unfortunately, Les Miston has major gamma issues on the new blu-ray disc.
https://slow.pics/c/cgQjuo9F

macaca wrote: Sun Jul 06, 2025 9:05 pm Unfortunately, Les Miston has major gamma issues on the new blu-ray disc.
https://slow.pics/c/cgQjuo9F

Glad I held on to my BFI Blu-ray of The 400 Blows. (It's not an expensive disc anyway, I think I got it for less than £10.)