Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on The Criterion Channel

Watch this video and more on The Criterion Channel

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

French New Wave

The 400 Blows

1h 40m

Directed by François Truffaut • 1959 • France
Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Rémy

François Truffaut’s first feature is also his most personal. Told through the eyes of Truffaut’s cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), THE 400 BLOWS sensitively re-creates the trials of Truffaut’s own childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, and petty crime. The film marked Truffaut’s passage from leading critic to trailblazing auteur of the French New Wave.

Up Next in French New Wave

  • Hiroshima mon amour
    1:30:26
    Hiroshima mon amour

    Hiroshima mon amour

    Directed by Alain Resnais • 1959 • France, Japan
    Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada

    A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a ...

  • Les cousins
    1:49:45
    Les cousins

    Les cousins

    Directed by Claude Chabrol • 1959 • France
    Starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Gérard Blain

    In LES COUSINS (“The Cousins”), Claude Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures...

  • Breathless
    1:30:21
    Breathless

    Breathless

    Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • France • 1960
    Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger

    There was before BREATHLESS, and there was after BREATHLESS. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspi...

×