Technological innovations, a new approach to the economics of film production and a new sense of political and social value of film inspired New French Filmmakers or any new group of filmmakers in the 1960s to collectively create its own voice in World Cinema. Thus, the New Wave was born.
The 400 Blows is one of the best-remembered materials that introduced the New Wave to the world. The movement uses an approach sometimes called dialectical film that involved reconceiving the entertaining consumer commodity as an intellectual tool, a forum for discussion and examination. Often, materials written for this movement were personal essays that tackles political and social values that sought to communicate a message by engaging the audience in an intellectual discussion using the material as the arena for the forum.
Theme deconstruction is a useful tool in identifying the message that is encapsulated in the material. By doing this exercise, one is able to understand the evolution of a material in terms of the type of statement it tries to communicate to its audience.
The 400 Blows, in terms of theme, explores the basic human struggle between belonging and freedom. The four principal characters in the material, torn between two irreconcilable needs, complicates their lives as each one struggles to satisfy the need to belong somewhere with someone and the need to be free. In the end, one of the characters, through force of circumstance, opt for freedom at the complete sacrifice of the need to belong. Thus, it is difficult to be free and to belong to somewhere with someone at the same time.
This desire to enjoy both freedom and belonging is the very thing that complicates the lives of the principal characters. The more that they insist in pursuing both needs, the more it becomes evident that sooner or later each one will be force to choose between the said needs.
Marriage, Family and Community are arenas that satisfy the need to belong to somewhere with someone. But these arenas restrict our individual freedom to do whatever we want. Being part of a marriage, family and community requires commitment and consensus. The individual disappears and the collective emerges. Freedom, on the other hand, is the absence of commitment and consensus. It does not submit to any social contract and operates on individual sense of independence. But freedom alienates a person from the collective and veers away from arenas that limits it.
Thus, the material is a socio-political value that engages the audience in a discussion about freedom and belonging. It asks the question; Are you willing to sacrifice the need to belong somewhere with someone for the sake of freedom? Or are you willing to sacrifice freedom for the sake of the need to belong somewhere with someone?
Theme deconstruction enriches our knowledge in terms of understanding how a material was constructed. We begin to appreciate the skills of highly creative writers in coming up with materials that engages the audience in terms of presenting a statement of fact, argument, persuasion or propaganda.
The 400 Blows is definitely a statement of argument that challenges us to re-examine our individual definitions of freedom and belonging as well as the inherent conflict of the said needs. In the process, as we struggle to enjoy both needs, it only delays the unavoidable. Sooner or later, we need to make a choice.
