If François Truffaut had never made another film, The 400 Blows would have earned him an enduring place in film history. Its semi-autobiographical story of a lad who is unwanted by his parents, bored by school and attracted to petty crime is told with an energetic blend of anarchy and rigor, the kind of unsentimental lyricism that was to become Truffaut's trademark. As a portrait of adolescence, it is still unmatched in cinema; as a portrait of Paris through a young boy's eyes, it is a thoroughly unromanticized picture of cramped apartments, cold schoolrooms, and the narrowing confines of the streets. Even snowballs have stones in them. A young Jean-Pierre Leaud, in his first appearance as Truffaut's alter ego Antoine Doinel, reflects the strange sobriety of watchful youth in a performance of exceptional sensitivity, due largely to Truffaut's unorthodox direction. "He was a 'natural,'" Truffaut has said, "and I encouraged him to play it 'by ear.' He performed freely...." Truffaut's real-life ordeal went far beyond that of Antoine Doinel (who escapes incarceration to a moment of truth by the sea); interned in a rehabilitation center, and later imprisoned again as a recalcitrant army rebel, he escaped into art. The 400 Blows, made when he was 27, captured the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.