Autobiography Without Self Pity

Antoine Doinel is twelve, lives in a cramped Paris flat with a mother who resents him and a stepfather who tolerates him, and commits a series of small offences that the adult world escalates into a career. Truffaut had lived most of it: the truancy, the stolen typewriter, the reform institution. What keeps the film from misery is that it refuses to plead. Antoine is not a symbol of neglect, he is a specific boy who lies badly, loves the cinema, likes Balzac too much and enjoys himself whenever the adults are not looking. Jean-Pierre Leaud was found through a newspaper advertisement and went on to play the same character in five films across twenty years, which makes this the beginning of the longest running character study in cinema.