History Film / TheAdventuresOfAntoineDoinel

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* ReverssCerebusSyndrome: After ''The 400 Blows'', the next films are considerably LighterAndSofter. Can lead to MoodWhiplash, since the general idea is still the same: the whole world misunderstands Antoine and he fails at everything he tries, except now it's PlayedForLaughs.

* CerebusSyndrome: Inverted. After ''The 400 Blows'', the next films are considerably LighterAndSofter. Can lead to MoodWhiplash, since the general idea is still the same: the whole world misunderstands Antoine and he fails at everything he tries, except now it's PlayedForLaughs.

* ShoutOut: Too many to count, especially in ''Love on the Run''. Mostly to Truffaut's other films and to actors that he worked with.

* ''The 400 Blows'' (1959): This film introduces Antoine, a Parisian bastard child with a cold, adulterous mother and an argumentative stepfather. The film follows him as, after a series of injustices, he becomes a juvenille deliquent and his family abandons him. The title comes from the French slang term "faire les quatre cents coups" which means something like "raising hell" or "living a wild life." Considerably DarkerAndEdgier than the next four films. It snagged Truffaut the Best Director award at Cannes at the tender age of 27. It's often considered one of the greatest films ever made.

* ''Antoine and Colette'' (1962): A short film Truffaut made for the ''Love at Twenty'' anthology, which is about... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin well.]] This marks the saga's turn from drama to light romantic comedy.

* ''Stolen Kisses'' (1968): Antoine has just been discharged from the army for "instability of personality" and immediately sets to chasing after his sweetheart, Christine Darbon. Now that he's out of the army, however, he's got to get a job, and decides to become the world's worst private eye. Despite its massive departure from the tone of ''The 400 Blows'', it's often considered one of Truffaut's best films. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

* ''Bed and Board'' (1970): Antoine, now married to Christine and failing with slightly less consistency at his attempts to hold down a job, falls for a NiceGirl called Kyoko. HilarityEnsues.

* ''Love on the Run'' (1979): Antoine is now in his thirties. At the beginning of the film, he has finalized his divorce from Christine, published a successful novel, and seen the reappearance of an old friend, all of which prompt him to [[ClipShow reflect back on his life.]] Still a light, fluffy romance, but a little more sober than the previous films. Truffaut made this as a definitive end to Antoine's adventures.
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!!Films with their own trope pages:

* ''Film/The400Blows''
* ''Film/AntoineAndColette''
* ''Film/BedAndBoard''
* ''Film/LoveOnTheRun''
* ''Film/StolenKisses''

%% * LastGirlWins: Sabine, ultimately, in ''Love on the Run''.

%% * RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: Christine and Liliane.

* CoversAlwaysLie: [[http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/4/b70-2237 What the heck does "Angel Faces hell bent for violence" mean?]] See also the [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wkMSc5DjQ18/R5k68rLmmGI/AAAAAAAACv8/4t8Wggu0DnA/s320/The-400-Blows-Poster-C10126131.jpg Italian poster]], which wants you to think it's a sexy romance which doesn't involve that boy in the far left background at all.

* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}

* CrapsackWorld: Particularly ''The 400 Blows''.
* DoggedNiceGuy: Antoine towards EVERYBODY. Sometimes to a slightly offputting extent.
* TheFool: Antoine is somewhere between this and ButtMonkey.
* LastGirlWins: Sabine, ultimately, in ''Love on the Run''.
* LeFilmArtistique
* MrsRobinson: Fabienne Tabard.
* RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: Christine and Liliane.

* StalkerWithACrush: One of these shows up kind of inexplicably in ''Stolen Kisses''. Often, Antoine when the DoggedNiceGuy thing gets a little out of hand.

* SatelliteLoveInterest: Kyoko. Justified since this is only because we see her through Antoine's eyes, and Antoine wants to see her as an exotic ideal. He gets tired of her once he realizes she's an actual person.

* WordSaladTitle: Subverted. The title of ''The 400 Blows'' is a reference to the French idiom idiom "faire les quatre cents coups", which means "to raise hell". In other countries it often comes across as this trope. The original translator tried to give the film the name ''Wild Oats'' in an attempt to avert this, but the distributor changed it back.

* DownerEnding: ''Antone and Colette'' ends with Antoine decisively rejected by his crush Colette, who is dating an older man.

* IdiosyncraticWipe: ''Antoine and Colette'' uses a peculiar wipe in which the screen shrinks to a smaller rectangle centering on one part of the image, like Antoine's face. Then the rectangle disappears, then the process reverses itself, showing us the next scene.

* MythologyGag: In ''Antoine and Colette,'' Antoine has a painted picture in his room of the second-most-famous shot in ''The 400 Blows'': the scene in the prison cell, where he pulls his turtleneck over his nose.

* AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents: Particularly cruel version from ''The 400 Blows'': Once Antoine's parents learn that he's been skipping school, they decide to punish him in the most humiliating way imaginable to a preteen boy—by going down to school, storming into his classroom, slapping him in front of all his classmates, and letting him (and everyone else in the room) know, in no uncertain terms, that there's more to come once he gets home. They then leave him to stew in terror and suspense for the rest of the school day.
* AuthorAvatar: Little Antoine's story was based off Truffaut's childhood experiences, but Antoine's adulthood is fictional. In-universe, Antoine writes a novel which is very close to a word-for-word autobiography.
* BittersweetEnding: By the end of the first film, sweet-natured Antoine is considered a worthless delinquent. His own mother washes her hands of him and requests that after a stint in juvenille detention he be sent to a work camp by the shore where she doesn't have to deal with him anymore. But at least he gets to see the ocean - in one of French cinema's most famous and beautiful scenes.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Much of what happens to Antoine in ''The 400 Blows''. He's a good-hearted, intelligent, sensitive young man, but prone to mischief and hasn't quite figured out the status quo. But the DisproportionateRetribution escalates until by the end of the film, everyone in his life has written him off as an incurable delinquent.

* FreezeFrameEnding: One of if not ''the'' most famous example of the trope in ''The 400 Blows''. As young Antoine finally reaches the coast from his perpetual series of bad luck and federal injustice. He's still being chased, and has nowhere to go beyond the coast, but is enjoying the beach and an innocent sense of freedom, causing him to smile back towards the land and, consequently, into the camera. The camera then freezes and zooms on his face.

* LimitedWardrobe: Justified. Poor as he was, Antoine wears the same checkered jacket throughout ''The 400 Blows''.

* WordSaladTitle: Subverted, the title of ''The 400 Blows'' is a reference to a French idiom meaning "to raise hell." In other countries it often comes across as this trope. The original translator tried to give the film the name ''Wild Oats'' in an attempt to avert this, but the distributor changed it back.

''The Adventures of Antoine Doinel'' are five films directed by Creator/FrancoisTruffaut which star the same character, the [[WideEyedIdealist romantic but perpetually naive]] Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), from adolescence to his mid-thirties.