Film

We can view François Truffaut’s miniaturist classic the way it so often is—as the opening salvo of the French New Wave and the boldly personal work of a once hot-tempered critic. Or we can see it for what it has become: neither as bracing or dynamic as Godard’s best (nor as beneficial), and the start of its maker’s sentimentalization of youth. That’s not being glib. The 400 Blows will always serve as worthy inspiration to future humanists attempting to chronicle the misadventures of lost boys with a caméra-stylo as light as cinematographer Henri Decaë’s “pen.” But today’s film culture certainly doesn’t lack for cutesy autobiography; moreover, the revolution we need most in movies today is not one of the heart but of the mind.

Enough harshness. Go to Film Forum’s revival and be moved, as you surely will be. Beyond attack is the blinking performance of Jean-Pierre Léaud, only 14 at the time of shooting (he responded to a want ad) as the impossibly sympathetic Antoine Doinel, the director’s surrogate for several more films. Antoine mopes in his bedroom and the sad rooms of others; he cribs Balzac for his homework; he runs away and considers unethical acts. The movie’s final zoom-in remains a stunner, as close to sublime as Truffaut would ever get.