The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959) is François Truffaut's debut feature you can watch online on iFILM. Shot in Paris on a lean budget, it launched the French New Wave and introduced Antoine Doinel — a character Truffaut revisited across four more films over two decades.

Twelve-year-old Antoine, played by a revelatory Jean-Pierre Léaud, drifts between an indifferent mother, a passive stepfather, and a schoolteacher with no patience. He and his friend René skip class, roam the streets, and keep digging themselves deeper. When a clumsy lie pushes too far, Antoine ends up facing a juvenile court judge who treats him like a case file rather than a kid.

Truffaut was 27 when he made the film, drawing heavily on his own Paris childhood. Cinematographer Henri Decaë keeps the camera close and restless, almost always at Antoine's eye level. The film won Best Director at Cannes in 1959 and has held its place on critics' essential lists ever since. Watch The 400 Blows (1959) online on iFILM.