Wednesday 29 September 2010

Comments on ' The 400 Blows'

This film aimed to show power and poverty within an urban Paris environment. I enjoyed the open sequence of the Eiffel Tower and other Paris landscapes as I thought it was going to be an introduction to contrast in people that can be seen walking on the streets. Tracking shots were also used frequently in the classroom and house setting - this represented the fact that there would be something significant about the young child. Cinematography-wise, the film deserves mass praise, making use of digetic and non-digetic sound and fading to black between scenes, creating a sense of 'same old, same old' on young Antonie's life.

We can clearly see that Antonie has a poor, lower-class family. This is indicated by there small-spaced house, his constant re-wearing of clothes and scruffy hair and the fact that all income went towards a treat for the family every once in a while. We know that his parents neglect him and cannot stand his actions anymore, to the point where they discuss sending him to an oprhanage. Society also has no care towards him - he walks through the Paris streets in broad daylight, with thousands of people around him,completely un-subtle, and no one bothers to even ask why he is carrying a heavy typewriter.

Unfortunately, there seemed to be a lack of a definite plot to this film and I thought many scenes within the film's 99 minutes appeared to have no sense of direction, making the film seem to last much longer in duration and decreased my enjoyment of it. The cinematography captured the deprived, urban setting very well, and this was shown very well in Antonie's character as well. with parents that didn't mention his own name once when talking about him and concluding that he cannot be dealt with by them. I felt that these needed a plot direction in order to make the film bearable.

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