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| "Time will tell how much Truffaut has to say; in the meantime he, and this movie, bear watching." |
| (Playboy) |
| "One of the greatest movies ever made." |
| (Rex Reed) |
| "In every frame... Truffaut's force and intelligence are felt. He has a remarkable control of his medium and of himself." |
| (Time) |
| "One of the most beautiful films that I have ever seen." |
| (Akira Kurosawa) |
| "I have never been so moved at the cinema." |
| (Jean Cocteau) |
| "The first masterpiece of the New Wave." |
| (Jonas Mekas, Film Culture) |
| “Les 400 Coups is not a masterpiece. So much the better for Francois Truffaut! In the first place the word has been so debased that it finally becomes meaningless. Next, and above all, with a masterpiece in his pocket at twenty-seven Truffaut would really have something to worry about - he would have to spend his life trying to shed the burden. Les 400 Coups is better than a masterpiece. Together with Hiroshima Mon Amour, it is one of the two most original films made in France since the war." |
| (Fereydoun Hoveyda, Cahiers du Cinema) |
| "The narrative is boldly fluent. Sympathetic, amused, reminded, occasionally puzzled, you are carried along with it. I don't think you will get away before the end." |
| (Dilys Powell) |
| "Stylistically Truffaut has a marvellous command... The images effortlessly carry the narrative... The cinema achieves one of its pure moments of catharsis." |
| (David Robinson, Financial Times) |
| "A masterly and moving story... [The final freezeframe is] a tremendous full-stop to a record of childhood unsurpassed by any other I have seen." |
| (Alexander Walker, Evening Standard) |
| "Although the film is relatively simple, Truffaut effectively uses cinematic technique to express the conflict between a spontaneous individual and a restrictive society ... There is continual motion ... enhanced by a flow of lyrical music, but also periodically interrupted by static scenes in confining places." |
| (Marsha Kinder & Beverle Houston, Close-Up, A Critical Perspective on Film) |
| "A perfect short story of puberty... all the rapt qualities of adventure and instinct." |
| (New Statesman, 1961) |
| "The central artistic idea is freedom, both in human relationships and in film technique... The 400 Blows ranges from sentimental travelling shots of Antoine's tear-stained face, underscored by Jean Constantin's lush music; to improvised, candid comic scenes in the schoolroom, echoing Vigo's candid work with school children; to a cinema verite interview between Antoine and a prying social worker; to agonizingly long, subjective travelling shots as Antoine escapes the reform school and races toward the sea. The film then ends with a deliberately startling surprise, a freeze-frame of the boy staring ahead, presumably implying the ambiguity of the future that lies ahead of him." |
| (Gerald Mast, A Short History of the Movies, 1971) |
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, Claire Maurier, Albert Remy
