The 400 Blows (1959)

Directed by François Truffaut. Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Truffaut's first feature was one of the first key films of the French New Wave movement, a group of former film critics-turned-directors committed to expanding the language of cinema. This, perhaps the greatest film ever made about childhood, tells the story of young, troubled Antoine Doinel, played by Léaud in one of the legendary performances by a youngster. Antoine isn't a bad kid, simply one who is having a difficult time fitting in anywhere- at home, where his parents are too occupied with other aspects of their lives to pay him much attention, and at school, where his boorish disciplinarian of a teacher seems constitutionally incapable of giving Antoine the benefit of the doubt. Before Truffaut became a critic, he was a troubled kid much like Antoine, and the reason the film works as well as it does is because he knows this character so well, refusing to turn him into either a incorrigible brat or a misunderstood saint. Antoine, much like many children of his age, mostly just lives in the moment, doing what he feels he should do at the time, not exactly heedless of the consequences but simply too caught up in the present tense to bother with the future. Though there are both happy and sad moments in the film, this isn't a comedy or a melodrama, but simply a portrait of this boy's life told from his perspective. The film's final scenes, which take place after Antoine has been sent to a detention home after his parents give up on him, have a rare power because they confirm so definitively that the most important people in his life have written him off. All of this leads up to the immortal final shot, where he finds himself all alone on the beach, and when the image suddenly freezes it's like Truffaut is underlining the importance of this moment in his life. That this famous final image was supposedly accidental does nothing to diminish its power.