[400 Blows]
The school system shown here is based on pupil management, not genuine education, as the children are required merely to obey – not to learn. Thus, the kids lack morality both because they never learn it from their parents and because obedience has nothing to do with free choice - the basis of morality.
The adults here are hypocrites whose desperate little secrets (eg, adultery) are ways of getting back at life - as well as their partners – but which fail to help them to truly grow as people. This movie gets inside the heads of young boys verging on puberty and shows they are not so naïve about adult issues like sex as those same adults would like to believe. Suggesting that perhaps kids are never truly innocent in any meaningful sense.
Jean-Pierre LEAUD offers up a spirited performance as the young Antoine Doinel as he comes up against an authoritarian social system where personal integrity is not prized. Like the director, his alter ego, Antoine ran to the cinema - away from the brutalizing affects of an immoral culture. What this film lacks, however, is a satisfying ending with some suggestions for change - as this very escapism suggests it would not.
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