The 400 Blows

In The 400 Blows, twelve-year-old Antonie Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) plays a misunderstood kid, unloved at home and mistreated by anyone older than himself, in Francois Truffaut’s autobiographical tale. Sweet but never sentimental in its portrayal of it truant antihero, the film helped usher in the French New Wave. Its closing show — a freeze-frame of the haunted Antoine on the beach, staring out at us — is one of the most famous in movie history. But it’s there by luck: Truffaut, broke, had merely run out of film, and his editor suggested just stopping the movie. In black and white. A