"AN OFFICIAL CLASSIC OF FRENCH CINEMA!"
– Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times. Click here to read feature

"Time has fortified this sharp, slender account of a misbegotten boyhood into one of the unassailable monuments of French cinema. Even if you know it well, you should make the pilgrimage to Film Forum."
– Anthony Lane, The New Yorker. Click here to read review

"Alternately immediate and elegant, playful and brooding, gritty and poetic. In other words, it’s a film that veers between extremes, replicating with uncommon verve the crazy rhythms of youth. No wonder it kick-started a revolutionary cinematic movement!"
– New York magazine

"ONE OF THE ALL-TIME GREAT COMING-OF-AGE MOVIES." – Time Out New York

“Sincere and touching, unsentimental, and funny...
Truffaut and Mr. Léaud put a life on film that is vibrant, romantic, indelible.”
– Darrell Hartman, The New York Sun

(1959) Growing up is tough for Antoine Doinel, especially when he gets caught in class adding a moustache to a pin-up and plagiarizing Balzac, regularly cuts school with pal René, spots his mother with another man, and finally gets nabbed trying to return a stolen typewriter — guess it’s time for reform school. Truffaut’s first feature — and the first worldwide smash of the New Wave — garnered him Best Director at Cannes (from which he’d been barred the year before as the most acerbic critic in France) and the New York Film Critics Circle’s Best Foreign Film award, but as an admittedly semi-autobiographical work caused acute embarrassment to his mother. Truffaut described star Jean-Pierre Léaud as “more aggressive, less submissive” and older than the character he imagined; chosen from 60 responders to a newspaper ad, the 14-year-old Léaud improvised much of his own dialogue, notably the interview with the psychologist, and almost immediately became the non-stop jeune premier of the New Wave (see October 5-11). Henri Decaë’s camera — shooting in Dyaliscope, a French equivalent of CinemaScope, despite a minuscule budget — encompasses dingy neighborhoods under a looming Eiffel Tower; stolen shots of urchins spectating at a Punch and Judy show and of pigeons scattering as pint-sized thieves hurtle along the Champs-Elysées; minutes-long side-tracking shots of Léaud’s getaway; topped by a closing freeze-frame that has attained the immortality of endless imitation. “Truffaut himself said that the film was to be judged on its sincerity, rather than its technical quality, but it is a triumph on both counts. As it is, it is simply perfect.” – David Shipman. “A triumph of simplicity.” – Jacques Rivette. “I have never been so deeply moved by a picture.” – Jean Cocteau. Plus ANTOINE AND COLETTE(1962), Truffaut’s half-hour sketch from the omnibus feature Love at Twenty: the further adventures of Antoine Doinel (Léaud), now a young adult working as an LP presser in a record factory and getting nowhere with hot-and-cold girlfriend Marie France Pisier — though he’s a smash hit with her folks. “Mirrors the veracity of life itself.” – Andrei Tarkovsky. “Among the most beautiful things Truffaut ever committed to film.” – Kent Jones.
BOTH FILMS RELEASED BY JANUS FILMS.

Click here to see photo of Jean-Pierre Léaud and Jeanne Moreau at Film Forum in 1999.

"Put on your finest beret and head to Film Forum when a newly restored 35mm print makes its debut!"
– Brian Niemetz, New York Post

"One of the most intensely touching stories ever made. With all its simplicity and feeling, The 400 Blows is in a class by itself."
– Roger Ebert

For sale at Amazon:

THE FILMS IN MY LIFE
by François Truffaut.