400 Blows by Francois Truffaut

The movie 400 Blows by Francois Truffaut, similarly to many other French New Wave movies, tries to reconceptualize cinematic conventions, art, and culture in France. 400 Blows is an example of how the cinematography and the narratives created during the French New Wave avoid romanticizing and glorifying France; Truffaut’s decision to show the viewer the city through the routine and every day life of the characters allows the movie to portray the precarity and instability that characterized the country after the war. Moreover, consciously choosing to depict France in a completely different way to what the studio system considered and imposed as visual pleasure, choosing to distance oneself from the expected, is a refusal to the established patterns of filmmaking, but also to the hierarchical order in France back then. The fact that the movie tries to give an authentic depiction of daily life allows the viewers to form their own connections, conclusions, and assumptions. Hence, giving them agency, which contributed to the reshaping of values, conceptions, and ideals of the new generations of filmmakers and cinema spectators during that time in Europe.