Antoine (a young Jean-Pierre Léaud, in his first film role) is a Parisian boy who spends most of his time with his best friend, Rene. But their attempts to escape both neglectful parents and overbearing adult authority soon end in disaster. Finding himself in trouble with the law, Antoine now faces another struggle for freedom, one that will potentially define his life just as his own sense of self is coming into view.
Both stark and intimate, The 400 Blows is an iconic depiction of the tearaway spirit of youthful adolescence. Shot and structured with powerful simplicity, the film was partly based on Truffaut’s own childhood, giving birth to an entirely new notion of personal, subjective cinema in the 1960s as part of the French New Wave’s redefinition of the medium of film.