While doing research for last week’s Disney Blogathon, I ran across several commentary lists and blog posts attacking Disney films for being “anti-Mom” because some of the studio’s notable movies feature young protagonists who are orphans or who lose their mothers. The idea that these viewers could arrive at such a superficial and misguided subtext of the films boggled my mind and made me believe more than ever that media literacy should be a required part of school curriculums. Media literacy teaches young viewers not only to be wary of the manipulative power of media but also how to interpret and examine movies in ways that are informative and productive. Of course, there are many ways to look at any given film, and aspects of certain films are deliberately ambiguous, which makes key scenes, events and characters open to debate, but interpretation should involve more than personal opinion. Highly speculative interpretations based on nothing but personal opinion are just confusing and inaccurate. 

While I was reading some of the anti-Mom rants, the French New Wave classic The 400 Blows popped into my mind, because of its thoroughly unsentimental depiction of motherhood. I thought if these viewers think Dumbo is anti-Mom, they would feint dead away if they were to watch The 400 Blows. Then, as coincidence would have it, I discovered that TCM is showing Francois Truffaut’s masterwork at the end of this week. I highly recommend this wonderful film, even if you have seen it several times before, but be prepared to time-shift with your home-recording devices because The 400 Blows airs on December 21 at 3:34am EST. 

The 400 Blows earned its place in cinema history as one of the films that launched the French New Wave in 1959, when it won a major award at the Cannes International Film Festival. The movie is the embodiment of the New Wave’s idea of camera-stylo, or camera-as-pen, a type of cinema in which the director’s camera serves the same function as the novelist’s pen – as a medium of personal expression for the filmmaker. The 400 Blows is also a compendium of visual and narrative techniques associated with the New Wave – from freeze frames to hommages to hand-held camera – which would influence the next generation of directors all over the world, even those in Communist countries.  But, that was not what I was reminded of when the movie popped into my brain last week. I began thinking about the film’s “anti-Mom” theme and pondering the reasons behind it.

The 400 Blows tells the story of Antoine Doinel, an adolescent boy who seems to be his own worst enemy as he courts trouble both at school and at home. His strict, humorless teacher tends to single him out for criticism and punishment, though I think anyone faced with a classroom full of adolescent boys might quickly turn humorless and be prone to corporal punishment. Antoine lives with his stepfather, a jaunty middle-aged bloke who does have a sense of humor, and his mother, an attractive blonde who is distant and aloof. The trio are jammed into a cramped apartment, with Antoine sleeping on a cot by the back door. When his mother comes home late from “work,” she has to step over him.

ANTOINE LIES TO THE CLUELESS TEACHER

The episodic narrative unfolds from Antoine’s point of view as he engages in childish mischief with his buddy Rene, though he is always caught and punished after each incident. Because we see things from his perspective, we are sympathetic toward his plight, even when he stupidly and sometimes deliberately commits one transgression after another. The misdeeds escalate as the film progresses, and he and Rene eventually steal a typewriter from his stepfather’s office. When they are unsuccessful in pawning it, Antoine attempts to return the machine, but he is caught by the building’s concierge. At this point his parents wash their hands of him and turn their son over to the police and the court system. The young boy is placed in a grim juvenile detention center, from which he is lucky enough to escape. Instead of ending with Antoine basking in his freedom, the film’s legendary final freeze frame of his bewildered face shows us that the boy is lost – literally and figuratively.  

DYSFUNCTION IN THE FAMILY

Antoine’s mother Gilberte, played by Claire Maurier,  is not cruel or uncaring, but she is self-absorbed and uninterested in the family lifestyle that she is trapped in. In one scene, she looks in the mirror, checking her “assets” to make sure she is still attractive; she shows little interest in family activities; and, she is having an extramarital affair, which pulls her farther away from her maternal duties. Because we see everything and everyone through the point of view of poor, scarred Antoine, we understand the devastating effect that her actions and unfeeling manner have had on her son. A hint of the boy’s mixed feelings of love and anger toward her is revealed when his teacher demands a reason for his absence from school; finally, in fishing for a way to get out of trouble, Antoine blurts out that his mother died. In effect, he has “killed” his mother as a solution to his immediate problem, speaking volumes about the root of his troubles.  

GILBERTE IS NOT CUT OUT FOR MOTHERHOOD

After Antoine discovers that his mother is having an affair, she shows an interest in her son to prevent him from telling his stepfather about her indiscretions. Though her actions are self-motivated, she does seem genuinely concerned that her son do well in school, especially when she recalls her own lack of education. Mother and son strike a deal that she will reward him if he will do better in school. In typical films of the period, especially Hollywood movies, this might be a turning point for Antoine to get his act together and for the mother to realize her love for her son. Unfortunately – and unexpectedly for some viewers – mother and son’s last chance to reconnect and bond fails.

At the end of the film, Antoine explains to the shrink at the detention center that his mother had become pregnant with him out of wedlock when she was very young. She had wanted to have an abortion, but his grandmother prevented it. When his mother married, he lived with his grandmother until she became too old to take care of him, and then he went to live with his mother and stepfather. Learning that information after seeing the dysfunctional Doinels for the bulk of the movie makes the family dynamic fall into place: The mother is aloof because she resents her son for ruining her chances at the life she wanted. She settled for less when she married Doinel, who didn’t count on getting a half-grown boy in the bargain. This explains the stepfather’s ambivalence toward Antoine: He seems to genuinely care for the boy, cooking for him and allowing him to share his hobbies, but he doesn’t feel a strong enough bond to help the teen when he acts out. Instead, the stepfather turns him into the police. At the beginning of the film, the English teacher in Antoine’s school tries to teach his students to speak English using the phrase “Where is the father?” The question is repeated several times during the course of the lesson until it hangs in the air for the rest of the film, underscoring Antoine’s troubles.  

At the end of the movie, just before Antoine runs away from the detention center, his mother comes to visit him. Angry and bitter, she chides him for being ungrateful and it is clear that in the sides drawn between a husband she has betrayed and her own flesh and blood, she has chosen her husband. Thus, the consequences of one unwanted child are three ruined lives.

The 400 Blows is autobiographical, and the family is a fictional version of Truffaut’s own family situation, which most historians and critics have written about. The illegitimate son of a young mother who didn’t want him, Francois endured an ambivalent relationship with his stepfather, Roland Truffaut, and an adolescence marked by repeated scrapes with the law. His only respite was the cinema, which he credits as saving him, though not before a stint in the juvenile detention center where he was sent after Roland turned him in to the police. Antoine Doinel, as played by Truffaut discovery Jean-Pierre Leaud, was Truffaut’s alter-ego for a whole series of films. Truffaut uses film as a medium of personal expression, and  The 400 Blows epitomizes cinema-stylo. And, this is where many critics and commentators leave it.

ANTOINE AND RENE ESCAPE TO THE MOVIES

But, Antoine’s mother is not the only representation of motherhood in The 400 Blows. Rene’s mother, whom we see only once, is also no candidate for Mother of the Year.  Evidently an alcoholic, she steals money from a stash hidden in an antique box and then comes and goes as she pleases, oblivious to the two boys who are hiding in the room and the dozens of cats that adorn the musty, old apartment where Rene’s family lives. The father, mother, and Rene all lead separate lives, rarely in the same space together. Elsewhere, a negative view of all things related to motherhood comes through in the dialogue. Early in the film, Antoine runs an errand, and on his way home, he passes by a group of neighborhood women talking about someone who had a difficult pregnancy. The conversation expands to an array of horror stories about miscarriages, Caesarian births, and other stories that seem to expose what an act of pain and violence birth can be. Later, when Antoine’s mother is told that her cousin is pregnant again, she is disgusted, then compares her and her husband to rabbits. There are few, if any, positive scenes, events, or conversations about motherhood to balance these dominant negative views.

I find the emphasis on the dark side of child-bearing and child-rearing particularly interesting for the time period. In Hollywood films, the sanctification of motherhood as the ultimate achievement and fulfillment for women was mandated in the Production Code. Leading ladies were marriage-minded and family oriented, even if they held a job. The union of the male and female at the end of the movie was synonymous with the happy ending and a signifier of problems solved. During the Golden Age, women characters with careers often spouted an obligatory line about biding their time until they could find the right guy to settle down. There were bad girls and career women who disliked children or the idea of motherhood in Hollywood movies, but they were punished either literally or figuratively within the confines of the plot. The role of wife and mother was sanctified as an ideal fantasy of love, devotion, and instant fulfillment that not only shaped the depiction of women in American films long after the Code was history but also left an imprint on our culture in regard to expectations for women. That impression still lingers today, even in the shadow of feminism. I do not know enough about French film to speculate on the depiction of women in that industry during the 1950s, but I do know that Truffaut and the other New Wave directors embraced Hollywood films, which flooded the market in France after WWII. I can’t help but wonder what Truffaut thought of the plethora of perfect mommies in the Hollywood movies he so loved.

I think The 400 Blows is more than Truffaut’s expression of angst and pain over his own childhood. Taking into account all of the films’ bad mothers and negative views of birth, we see the antithesis of Hollywood’s glorification of motherhood. Truffaut takes issue with Hollywood’s idealization by showing us the opposite view.