Coverage

Starting with this very first shot, which lasts nearly a full minute, you can see Bazin's protege, Francois Truffaut, striving for a kind of sincerity in his film, exactly as the master would have suggested, by prolonging the integrity of the individual shots. The 400 Blows is a treat for students of film and of what is termed visual literacy in many ways, not the least of which is the film's use is here of what we will refer to as expressive editing.

4:17 · jump to transcript →

Truffaut, who spoke and wrote often of his admiration for Alfred Hitchcock's films, in this scene emulates one of the master's more playful tricks. For Francois Truffaut himself can be seen, briefly and intermittently, as one of the adults also taking the ride along with Antoine. Truffaut is the slight dark-haired man in the dark cloth jacket. Right there. Several critics have pointed out, accurately I think,

22:22 · jump to transcript →