I don’t have any arguments to make, but wanted to join this discussion. I think you make some excellent observations in your original post. It is easy to see that the film has many outstanding qualities, but does it leave a greater overall impact on the viewer?
I think the greatness of many movies is very ephemeral, enough so that I wonder if the movie is highly regarded simply because it is known to be highly regarded. Another film that I felt similarly about is Killer of Sheep. It’s also a older black and white movie with realist tendencies, and its unavailability to the public only increased its reputation before finally being released on DVD.
With both movies you have a lot of 9 and 10 star IMDB reviews praising the films’ genius and humanity, while others scratch their heads wondering if they even saw the same movie (especially Killer of Sheep.) I don’t mean to prejudge any viewer or disparage anyone’s views, but I think we have gotten used to a certain approach in movies that more is better, and you can’t drive a point home hard enough. These movies are a 180 from that, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they are better films- just very different.
This movie captured me in its initial viewing, but like you also left me with reservations. A few things strike me about 400 Blows upon further review. The movie paints an achingly realistic and also touching portrait of Antoine, so realistic that I think it’s easy to overlook. There’s no traditional antagonist in the movie, though there are antagonistic forces. Antoine is at once smarter and much more sensitive than adults take him for, and at the same time his juvenile mind simply doesn’t understand the rules and consequences of the adult world (some arbitrary and unfair, some not.) I think this portrayal is truer to a child’s mind and experience than just about any film I can remember. If I really consider my own personal experience when I was young, or really observe the thoughts, behaviors, and reactions of my children, I think most all movie completely fail in really capturing children- actually, they don't even really try to. When Doinel is caught in the act (which of course happens numerous times) he doesn’t mug for the camera or overreact like your typical ‘misunderstood’ boy, he only stiffens in recognition and you can see the color of doom in his eyes. Like you, I didn’t necessarily feel for the boy like I do for other child protagonists, but that would have been the easiest thing for Truffaut to pull off. Tugging at heartstrings is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not necessarily a great or difficult accomplishment either.
The film does sort of meander from episode to episode, even as the stakes of Antoine’s actions grows. I think that is a reflection of Antoine’s experience of these events. It might have been possible to craft a more significant climax or path of character development, but then I think we would lose the intimacy and also realism of the film. By realism I don’t mean to say that a movie must be just as seemingly random and meaningless as real life, but that there’s a realism to Antoine’s experience that unexpectedly does reach a climax for me in the last sequence leading to the final frozen frame. I think that last freeze frame may be responsible for half of the movie’s popularity, which seems rather strange except I couldn’t possibly imagine a better final sequence to the film. My reaction is that at once I saw both the possibility and limitation of Antoine’s life, both in the present and in his future. I think Truffaut mainly just wanted to make an autobiographical movie about a boy, but I think Doinel’s experience is perhaps more universal than would initially seem to be. I think if a movie is intimately personal and human enough, it will be universal even if that was not the intent. I don’t think the viewer is supposed to think that “Life is pointless, boring, and unfair” either. If I had to take a stab at it, I would say the film shows how life can be inherently problematic and difficult for humans, that human relations are difficult, and that there’s not necessarily an easy answer. But even so, I think there is still a sense of (childlike) hope in the final frame, that Antoine has not given up despite his travails, nor will he devolve into a base life of violent crime beyond the end of the movie, But that’s just what I feel.
But ultimately the film does not leave me with a message, it leaves me thinking- which I think is ultimately is a better thing in certain ways (and I’m still thinking, which is why I offer my random thoughts rather than any particular argument or message.) I think it’s easy to think that anyone could make a movie just like 400 Blows or Killer of Sheep, they were made with low budgets, hey just follow a boy around for a few weeks and there you have it. But the fact is that such films are actually exceedingly rare, and that it is far harder to accomplish one of these films than it is to spend $200 million to blow up the earth in the most gratuitous way possible. Or in other words, it’s only easy to say after the fact that it would be easy to make a movie like these two, which totally belies their individuality and originality.
I still don’t totally disagree with your points about how it feels like the film is missing a theme, but at the same time I don’t believe I can think of a single way to change the film that wouldn’t be to its detriment.
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