Funfairs, truancy and typewriters: it's time to discuss a bonafide classic, Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows. Joining me for this conversation is Tara Creme, a film composer whose previous credits include documentaries Seahorse and March for Dignity. Tara’ brings her personal journey into cinema to this discussion, making for a fascinating conversation.
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Transcript:
00:00:02:01 - 00:00:12:27
Will
Hi. I'm Will Webb, and this is why you should watch. In this episode, we're discussing Francois Truffaut's 1959 film, The 400 Blows.
00:00:14:23 - 00:00:16:23
Tara
00:00:17:06 - 00:00:40:29
Will
In this classic coming of age film, young Antoine bunks off school and runs around Paris, returning home to a chaotic domestic situation that he yearns to escape. Joining me for this conversation is Tara Creme, a film composer whose previous credits include documentaries Seahorse and March for Dignity. Tara brings her personal journey into cinema to this discussion, making for a fascinating conversation.
00:00:42:00 - 00:00:42:28
Will
Hi, Tara. How you doing?
00:00:43:14 - 00:00:44:29
Tara
Hi. I'm well, thanks. How are you?
00:00:45:17 - 00:01:12:19
Will
So well. And the thing I left out about that, about you there in that plotted intro is that we've actually worked together on a project as well, which is how I know you so, me and Tara did something I think that's probably quite different to a lot of the rest of your work. A Very like a dodgy is like kind of sampling leads electronic music for a fake BBC magazine show for a short film last year, which was a very fun project and very different for me too, I should say.
00:01:12:21 - 00:01:33:09
Will
We're talking today about like an absolute all time classic movie, much more so than some of the other stuff that we featured here. But it's great to touch on this, these real classic stuff, which is Lazy 59 Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows, which I'm reliably informed is actually a really badly translated title. It's not so much as these like hits this kid gets in French.
00:01:33:09 - 00:01:54:09
Will
I think the title means more something like the 400 tricks, the tricks that are played on him, I guess. So we've got this kind of classic to talk about, and it's actually one that I had never watched. I knew very little about going in. Despite all the movies I've seen. Somehow I've managed to leave this off the list, and it'd be great to kick off by talking about how you came to the movie and kind of.
00:01:55:02 - 00:01:59:20
Will
Was it a recommendation for you? Was it one of those like thousand one films to watch before you die type things?
00:02:00:12 - 00:02:28:11
Tara
No, I was really lucky. I had I did French A-level when I was young. And it wasn't going very well. My French, I loved it was hard. It was really hard. We did. We had. But it improved when along with learning about the road system and the wine of Burgundy, we learn films of Truffaut. And it was just this fantastic syllabus which totally turned me on to film.
00:02:28:25 - 00:02:54:00
Tara
And we so I think what we've got to do is we've got to watch the films. All of his films, pretty much in with subtitles and then wrote about it in French. And there were themes like I remember the, the sort of exam themes were things like the role of children and the films of truth or the role of women in the films and Truffaut, things like that.
00:02:54:14 - 00:03:34:25
Tara
And I, I don't actually remember that it was just part of the syllabus, so we would have watched that. And yeah, totally. It saved my French A-level because I suddenly suddenly loved French and kind of studied French really through French cinema. And I used to it just completely turned me on to film and I used to go the used to be the everyman cinema in Hampstead before it got old Posh used to be this kind of rundown, lovely little repertory cinema, and you used to be able to go there and have a cup of coffee and a piece of cake and watch double and triple bills.
00:03:34:25 - 00:03:41:22
Tara
French On a monday afternoon. I don't know. I'm not sure if I was at school or if I had the afternoon off. So but it was very.
00:03:41:23 - 00:03:43:15
Will
Moving and talking with friends did.
00:03:43:16 - 00:03:53:12
Tara
Yes, I was travelling and so on. Whether it's when I was going over there to watch. Yeah, double and triple bills. So that's how I got into, that's how I got to watch the film.
00:03:53:15 - 00:04:10:20
Will
A triple bill is a serious bit of film going. I've never done a triple bill. I've done double bills, and I've sometimes played with the idea of going to the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square to see their like five film overnight screenings. But I cannot I don't think I could do that. I mean, I could sit still for as much as I like a long movie.
00:04:10:27 - 00:04:13:06
Will
I think five different movies is too much for me to get it.
00:04:13:12 - 00:04:34:26
Tara
Yeah, I think the triple bills were quite rare thing. Double bills I did often, but I remember once going to the well, there was one in Kings Cross for a scholar. Yeah, this I remember seeing all night there. But yeah, that was kind of mayhem, really. Everyone was just smoking at the back or people falling asleep in the aisles.
00:04:34:26 - 00:04:40:15
Tara
That was. Yeah, I think I kind of went there late or something. It was. It's too much. Five films the night.
00:04:40:15 - 00:04:57:18
Will
The the school is famous for that stuff isn't it. The I remember going to a talk with one of the guys who ran it, Nick Powell, who unfortunately died last year. And he said the worst thing that they had happened there was that one guy just died in the back row during an overnight because it was in an area that was very rundown in London at time.
00:04:57:18 - 00:05:11:12
Will
It was the King's Cross now is like so gentrified, but it was very rundown. And so a lot of homeless people would come in and basically use it as a cheap or even just like they snuck in a free place to sleep. And yes, old guy just died in the back row. So yeah, what a way to go.
00:05:11:14 - 00:05:28:09
Will
And at a real risk for survival of screening anyway. And I think it's lovely that you found this through A-level language. I mean, I'm just thinking about it as like an example of French language. There's so much like kind of playful and jokey colloquialism as well. I can't imagine how that would have been.
00:05:28:25 - 00:05:29:25
Tara
Yeah, that's so true.
00:05:29:25 - 00:05:45:12
Will
Yeah, I noticed that like Anton's stepdad, I thought it was his dad originally watching the film, but apparently his stepdad. Right. He says he gave him his name at some point. And I don't know if there's like something missing in the French individual in it, but I believe he's a stepdad.
00:05:46:00 - 00:05:47:08
Tara
Yeah, his dad.
00:05:48:00 - 00:06:00:20
Will
And he is like this real clown character who, like, has these recurring kind of bits that he's playing. And I'm assuming some of that stuff just goes right over my head as someone who's not a not a French speaker. So, yeah, that must have been slight.
00:06:00:29 - 00:06:11:23
Tara
Yeah. And I think we I think that was part of what we learnt as well I seem to remember, I mean that was another thing we used to write down these bits of slang I think while watching.
00:06:12:10 - 00:06:29:29
Will
And there's also like this, this corollary to that I guess is quite a lot of the classical French in it. There's love poetry that they study in class. And one of my favourite things about it is that Antoine becomes very briefly like obsessed with Balzac, the, the French author, and like a shrine to him in his little flat, which is, I think, a really funny touch.
00:06:30:28 - 00:06:58:20
Tara
I know it's really, really sweet. He liked this one brilliant little shot of him, him and his best friend. I mean, he's got this lovely best friend, Rene, and there is really a great friendship, a very loyal to each other. They really help each other. And so I don't know if you remember where he's just lying in Rene's on Rennie's sofa with either a cigarette or cigar in his hand, this huge Belzer book.
00:06:58:20 - 00:07:00:18
Tara
And he's like, this, yeah. 14 year old.
00:07:00:24 - 00:07:02:05
Will
Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic.
00:07:02:05 - 00:07:23:21
Tara
And then he has a shrine to him and it was really, really sad scene where he he plagiarising spells up on mistake because he's he's just absorbed spells so much that he by mistake completely right and I say with with all of the words from Balzac.
00:07:24:09 - 00:07:38:10
Will
Which is pretty wide back and actually explained the plot very briefly for those watching, there isn't really much of like a direct high stakes plot. It I mean, some high stakes stuff happens, but it's kind of like a random series of events type plots. And that's one of the things that marks out as part of the French New Wave.
00:07:38:10 - 00:07:57:21
Will
This is like one of the initial films of that film movement. We were watching these black and white almost verité movies in a way that I think to a modern viewer can feel a bit like unnoticeable. I noticed there was lots of like weapons and shaky camera kind of following the kids, and that's these style touches that feel really ubiquitous now.
00:07:57:21 - 00:08:28:07
Will
But back then were like these shattering like three big new ideas to bring in to drama, narrative, film in particular. And so we, we kind of follow Antoine through his daily life, and that's essentially the plot of it. He essentially gets into like a couple of scrapes. They get bigger and bigger stakes as they go on, which kind of climaxes in him ultimately entering the justice system, having stolen a very bad idea, stole a typewriter as one of the kids at the borstal tells him afterwards because they have zero members.
00:08:28:07 - 00:08:48:08
Will
Right. So they're really bad. Still. Yeah. So he has Rene who's this guy who seems to live in very different circumstances to him. His parents are also quite absent from his life. He has a rich dad and his mum, which apparently deliberately avoiding him and finding a son. He lives in this big gaff, which is where Antoine, when things get to heart of his parents, goes in like hides out there.
00:08:48:26 - 00:09:09:22
Will
We've read as well, and they also bank off school a lot. So that's a lot of the structure of the film is like that not going to school or getting into trouble at school and then deciding to avoid it following day and notably near the start of the movie, they go to a funfair which kind of kicks off the plot as much as it ever is, one because he sees his mum kissing another man on the street.
00:09:09:22 - 00:09:35:04
Will
So yeah, it's this kind of story of these kids who are very much adrift and very loose from society, really. But I was touched by that central performance from Jean-Pierre Lourd, I think is his name, which is this lovely and kind of sensitive performance. You know, he plays this boisterous kid who's trying to, like, construct his own identity, but he's always zipped up tight and is kind of grim and very closed in and quiet, prone to bursts of anger.
00:09:35:15 - 00:09:42:23
Will
And then opposite him is Rene, who is much more of a kind of fast walker and and then maybe more of a thinker with a group of things that.
00:09:43:16 - 00:10:13:24
Tara
Hmm, yeah. And yeah, I agree. The performance of Jean-Pierre is just fantastic. And do you know the story that he worked? He sort of he worked with him in successive films after this one. So he kind of took I mean, I think he was an actor. Oh, no, he wasn't an actor. And I mean, never acted before. But his mother once and that and so he kind of, you know, it wasn't unknown to the business, but he he'd never ac
