The Four Hundred Blows - Essay Example

The audience locates Antoine in the classroom following a traveling photo of a scantily clad woman. Antoine is shown being rebuked for having that picture which establishes the concept in the audiences’ mind that despite having no guiltier than his peers, Antoine is the only student who is being punished in the class. This pattern creates all through the exposition till the story’s end. The camera pans to follow a picture of a scantily clad woman and we follow the traveling photo around the classroom. Immediately, we see Antoine reprimand for having the picture. This sets up the idea that Antoine is no guiltier than any of his peers, but is the only one punished. This is a pattern that forms throughout the exposition, setup, and well into the rest of the story.

            The film The Four Hundred Blows captures the rift between the children and the adults in a brilliant way. The actions of the children confuse the adults, so the adults are not able to converse with the new generation. In the film, Truffaut has attempted to expose the adults’ hypocrisy in the world which causes the men and women thee middle age to be even more immature as compared to their children. Truffault has used the mise en scene in the film to project the point of view that wisdom does not necessarily come with age, as many of the audiences like to believe. A very good manipulation of the film’s mise en scene to project this point of view is when Truffault immediately cuts from Antoine to his mother; in one scene, Antoine has been forced to sleep in a paper mill and the boy is trying to prepare his bed within that and immediately the audiences are shown the silly argument between Antoine’s mother and his father. This manipulation is intentional to make the audiences think and reflect whether there is really a link between wisdom and age or children can be wiser than their adults, at least sometimes. The point of view that dominates the film is that sometimes, adults’ hypocrisy traps the children and creates hurdles in their way to success. The Four Hundred Blows is essentially a depiction of the injustices with which the juvenile offenders were treated in France at the time when the film was made.