Kind of a Movie Review #1: The 400 Blows (1959)

I watch a lotta movies by myself...that’s the kinda guy I am, like Pee-Wee Herman said, a loner, a rebel...or, like Van Gogh said,

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

Yes, I started out a mere couple of sentence fragments ago talking about watching movies by myself and here I am, already having drifted on to Vincent Van Gogh who, lonely as he was, never watched any movies...bear with me....what ties it all together is Truffaut’s 400 Blows, or, and the reasons I was glad I watched it alone, and therefore didn’t have to talk to anybody afterwards—no, not one of those socially awkward situations like where you see a movie about an alcoholic destroying himself with a friend who is himself an unacknowledged alcoholic who is also, in an unacknowledged way, destroying himself—though I’ve been there, too—no, it’s more a matter of...let me start at the beginning....

It's one of those movies I’d always heard about, one of those Euro-classics that are supposed to be so sublime, that, often as not, leave me cold...with some exceptions...the Bicycle Thief...or My Life to Live...or Un Chien Andalou...anyway, I started watching it and, while finding it pretty good, was also thinking...how the hell did this just pretty good movie get on all those critics’ top ten of all times lists?...which of course brought me into the usual orgy of egotism and self-loathing as the movie kept playing and I debated internally whether they were all wrong or I was...and then...that teardrop...gotta admit that was moving...though it still didn't seem to...oh, wait a second...the ending...that one overpowering final shot....

I’m not gonna say how it ended. Or what that shot was. You'll have to see it yourself. That's why I'm writing this: so you'll see it yourself. But I am gonna say it hit me deeper than I really expected any movie to at this point in my life...brought me into some of the loneliest, most wounded, most helpless places, with everything that’s been lost and everything that never was...kinda like that Neil Young song says...

in my mind I still need a place to go...and yet...chains are locked and tied across the door.....

I don’t know if it had that effect on any of those film critics...if they did I really doubt they’d admit it...hell, critical theory was invented so nobody’d have to admit to feelings like that...but I had work I need to do before I went to bed...and there was just no way...though there’d been a rash of muggings in my neighborhood including gun shots, I had to go for a late night walk...wasn't fully recovered for days, though I certainly can’t say it’ll have that effect on anybody else, either. But, then, that’s kinda the point...that profound sense of isolation...which, paradoxically, creates a strange connection...between Francois Truffaut, Vincent Van Gogh, Neil Young and me...and, yeah, I guess those film critics, too....

The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many different things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these things at one and the same time.
Henry Miller