Based on his own teenage years, Truffaut cast 15 year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud and they would make another six films together, four of them following Antoine becoming a man.
Parisian Antoine lives with his parents in a small flat. His father is amiable but his mother is emotionally cold. Antoine sees her kissing a man one day and she sees him, but neither mentions it.
Bored by school and draconian teachers, Antoine plays truant but his subsequent excuse is discovered and he starts a descent to being arrested, his parents disowning him and being sent to a youth detention centre.
Shelf or charity shop? I suspect this will be one ultimately for the charity shop but you cannot deny Truffaut's wonderful achievement or his excellent handling of his actors and in particular Léaud who ice-cold stare looks out at you from the famous freeze-frame ending - escaping from the detention centre, he runs to a nearby beach and turning away from the expanse of the sea, he looks into the camera... what does life hold for a boy whose only real crime is restlessness?
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