Bonjour,
I was wondering if the translation of the title was "right". Always seemed curious to me because
faire """les quatre cents coups"" = to be up to no good. Does The 400 Blows mean anything that would mean, doing something bad ?
merci
"The 400 Blows" is considered a rather faulty title for the original French one... The common interpretation of the original title is "Raising Hell", or "To Raise Hell". But the English title has to do with, I'm pretty damn sure, the fact that Antoine is whipped/beaten with a stick, (a "blow" being a hit) and I guess he's beaten more than a fair amount, hence, "400".
"There's an elephant in the room. And it's name is Sex." - Dexter, Dexter
This is about the 400th time this question has been asked on IMDb. "Coup" does not mean "blow" here, it is closer to "prank" or "trick" or "piece of mischief". It has nothing to do with punishment. Antoine is the one "doing the 400 coups".
shareSo who's responsible for this title? How did it happen?
Could it be a deliberate change, to emphasize, for the American market, how hard his life is?
G o t r i d o f t h e c o m p u t e r w i t h t h e f a u l t y s p a c e b a r
I just think it was translated literally, probably because the translator didn't realize that "faire les quatre cents coups [du diable]" meant "to raise hell".
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You are second guessing the director, who certainly never gave the picture a title indicating the adults' mistreatment of the protagonist.
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"You are second guessing the director, who certainly never gave the picture a title indicating the adults' mistreatment of the protagonist."
This is possibly quite true, but title aside it is unmistakable that Antoine's parents are indifferent at best and abusive/neglectful at worst. In point of fact none of the adults in this film come across particularly well, from his rotten parents to the sadistic man at the "reformatory" who belts him one across the face for taking a bite out of his bread at lunchtime before permission to eat has been given. I'd run too.
Never mess with a middle-aged, Bipolar queen with AIDS and an attitude problem!
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that sounds more like it.
"Hipness is not a state of mind, it's a fact of life!" - Cannonball Adderley
You are correct that the full expression, i.e. "faire les 400 coups", does mean "making mischief". But as the word "coup" by itself does mean "blow," the title could also refer to the "blows" Antoine suffers from his parents, teachers, etc ... In other words, the title has a double meaning. Or at least, that's how I've always interpreted it (I'm a contemporary of Doinel, having grown up in Paris at roughly the same era as the protagonist). But of course, the literal English translation doesn't really mean anything at all.
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