Les quatre cents coups (1959) watch online HD

Seemingly in constant trouble at school, 14-year-old Antoine Doinel returns at the end of every day to a drab, unhappy home life. His parents have little money and he sleeps on a couch that's been pushed into the kitchen. His parents bicker constantly and he knows his mother is having an affair. He decides to skip school and begins a downward spiral of lies and theft. His parents are at their wits' end, and after he's stopped by the police, they decide the best thing would be to let Antoine face the consequences. He's sent to a juvenile detention facility where he doesn't do much better. He does manage to escape however.

All the young actors who unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Antoine were used in the classroom scenes.

The English title of the movie "400 Blows" is a gross misinterpretation of the original title. The Finnish and Swedish translations of the title, roughly translatable to "400 practical jokes" are closer to the original meaning, albeit not perfect. The Swedish title: "De 400 slagen" means "The 400 blows" and make no sense. The original title stems from the French expression "Faire les quatre cents coups", meaning "to live a wild life", as the main character does. Literal translation of the expression would be "to do the 400 dirty tricks".

The title of the film comes from the French idiom "faire les quatre cents coups", meaning "to raise hell".

So pleased with Jean-Pierre Léaud and his screen test (an informal conversation with the film's director being off-camera), François Truffaut doctored it into the finished film by using fade-outs and substituting his voice with off-camera female psychiatrist's voice.

Jean-Pierre Leaud's answers to the questions given to him by the psychologist at the camp near the end of the film were not scripted. Francois Truffaut told Leaud in advance about the scene for what to expect to a certain extent, and did provide some minor coaching when Leaud answered the question in between takes as to what was working and what was not, but at large, Leaud's answers are unscripted and ad-libbed, per Truffaut's wishes, who wanted the scene to feel spontaneous and believable.

All spoken lines in the film are dubbed over again by the actors themselves, save for a few minor and trivial parts. For instance, during the last scene, the sound of Antoine's footsteps was added during editing - the truck that the camera rested upon produced too much noise. Shooting on the streets of Paris, as many films of the French New Wave did, was often hectic and re-dubbing everything allowed François Truffaut to not have to worry about lugging bulky and expensive sound equipment around, and more importantly he would not have to worry about a street scene having too much background noise. This made shooting faster and easier.

When Antoine and Rene are suspended from school, they go gallivanting around the town. At one point they pass a wall of posters and flyers, and they pull off a picture of a woman. The woman is Harriet Andersson in a shot from Ingmar Bergman's Monika (1953), also about two young lovers who ran away from home to "live their own life."

Dedicated to film theorist André Bazin.

François Truffaut's first major motion picture.

The zoetrope scene included Antoine holding his head while going dizzy on a ride, a nod to Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958).

Ellen Page says that The 400 Blows is her favourite film of all time.

The poem written on the board is 'Épitaphe Pour Un Lièvre' by Jean Richepin. It is an Alexandrine poem i.e. comprised of lines of twelve syllables, typical of modern French poetry.

The names of two Frenchmen noted for work in film - 'Leo Joannon' (director) and Tommy Desserre (composer) - are seen on boards outside theatres during the film.

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

The Spanish (Spain) dubbed version of this film has about 12 minutes of footage missing. When Antoine's mom returns home and argues with her husband while Antoine pretends to sleep, the scene in which the family heads home after going to the movie theater, when Antoine and René smoke and drink in Rene's room and when they throw things from the ceiling with blow pipes, are among the scenes that are missing. The scene in which the father talks about the new secretary sleeping with the boss is dubbed to the father speaking about the boss liking the new secretary and her being a very good worker and being promoted because of that. The interview with the psychologist was dubbed with the psychologist asking Antoine if he has had a girlfriend, and he talks about dating some girls but not liking any of them and finding a girl he liked but who chose an older guy instead of him, when in the original he is asked if he's slept with a woman and he goes on to talk about when he tried to get one to sleep with.

When Antoine's father finally nodded to the cinema business, realizing it is Rivette's "Paris nous appartient", he said: "Si c'est un complot..." And a 'complot' (conspiracy), really, is the central issue of the Rivette's film.

The film is included on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list.

This was the first French production to be shot in the anamorphic (2.35:1) widescreen format. The French Dyaliscope anamorphic system used for this film had previously been used for an Italian feature.

Juvenal (Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis) was a Roman satiric poet of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

François Truffaut's first film to be released on the Blu-Ray Disc format.

Ranked number 8 non-English-speaking film in the critics' poll conducted by the BBC in 2018.

This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #5.

François Truffaut: is seen riding next to Antoine in the centrifuge ride at the fair, and can then be seen smoking a cigarette just outside the ride.