Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows)

When one thinks 'nouvelle vague' one may, thanks to 'A Bout De Souffle', think quick jump cuts and jerky camerawork. Francois Truffaut's 1959 masterpiece does not use these tropes at all, yet manages to give us a new cinema. The dedication to Andre Bazin is generally a stylistic one, the long takes and the genuine respect for a realist image all very much there. Truffaut is just smart enough to realise that realism and auteur theory very much go together.
This long often wide angle takes mean we have a sense of a boy on the edge of proceedings, even as the narrative follows him (though notably the camera often does not when his parents are around). The story is a classic. It is funny, with diversions and frankly every scene being a joy in itself, loosely connected. There is also though here real thought and emotional depth, these never appearing heavy handed due partly to the stunning performance of our lead (the greatest child performance we can call to mind, he is a little man and a genuine boy) and a lightness of sound.
Paris looks terrific, shot with long long exposures to give us a real sense of texture, and for reasons that this film was made on the streets with natural light. The heavy grains give this a nice verite feel, whether or not this was Truffaut's intention.
The final scenes are of course remarkable, genuinely existential in the best possible way, beyond the Americanisms of the existentialists.
When we first saw this film we loved it. It was our favourite piece of cinema form the new wave. These two superlatives both still apply, this is truly, with its lightness and its thought, one of the great pieces of cinema. More than a classic, a masterpiece.