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<div style="font-size: x-small; color: #999999; margin: 0">three faces of Antoine Doinel</div>
</div><em>The 400 Blows</em> is one of the best movies I've ever seen, probably one of the best movies ever made, and it's primary genius is the character of Antoine Doinel; Truffaut's story and Jean-Pierre L&eacute;aud's performance contribute equally to this. Spurred by love of <em>The 400 Blows</em>, I have coveted the Criterion Collection's <em>The Adventures of Antoine Doinel</em> box set, which includes all five of the Antoine Doinel films. A <a href="http://www.jamesscarbrough.com">very nice person</a> who is also an excellent gift-giver gave me the Antoine Doinel set for my birthday this year, and I couldn't wait to see what adventures Antoine got up to as an adult.

The second installment, <em>Antoine and Colette</em>, a made-for-television short, did not disappoint. The others, however, did. Each successive movie erodes Doinel's character, finally rendering him little (nothing?) more than a buffoon. I think this is because the later movies focus almost exclusively on Antoine's obsession with women without even the brief glimpses of his inner life that punctuate <em>The 400 Blows</em>. In <em>The 400 Blows</em>, he is quite the little punk&mdash;but a little punk who erects a shrine to Balzac. 

Young Antoine never fulfills his finer impulses; grown-up Antoine seems not to have any. In the later movies, Antoine is a comic figure, an inveterate philanderer and ne'er-do-well. His love of music (in <em>Antoine and Colette</em>) and his writing give a nod to young Antoine's earnestness, but these interests never seem particularly compelling to him&mdash;just something to occupy his time between dates.

Maybe we're supposed to learn that this is what happens to men, or some of them&mdash;sexual awakening kills their finer impulses, their desire becomes one-directional, one-dimensional, exhausted in the pursuit of sexual pleasure (or companionship, or someone else's parents, or a warm body to lie next to), no fire left for Balzac. Puberty turns them into buffoons. Or maybe it's my reading of the movies that's shallow. Whatever the case, I'm happy to have the complete set and will surely watch them all again, even if the last three installments don't live up to the promise of the first two. 