The 400 Blows

What great remastering. It's amazing that a film this old can look so good. The picture is clean, crisp, near faultless. The necessary contrast between the variety of greys is perfect.

The 400 Blows has the quality of print it deserves. It makes you want to stop what you're doing and applaud what DVDs can do for film.

In one scene, the sound quality is a little off, but I suspect that this was the case during filming, rather than a fault with the disc. Elsewhere, the sound is fine. It may be just mono, but the film doesn't warrant anything more than that.

The subtitles have been re-translated for this release. Aside from a couple of clunky uses of "ya" for "you", there are no complaints.

It should be noted that the trailers for other Truffaut films wouldn't play and caused my DVD player to hang. This may be due to my sample disc, or perhaps my machine. Even if this proved to be a universal problem, it shouldn't prevent you from buying the DVD.

Les Mistons (The Brats) is an extra in the true sense of the word. It is a short film, made by Truffaut two years before 400 Blows. Unsurprisingly, it is eminently watchable and packs more depth and emotion into 20 minutes than a whole year's output from Hollywood. It also serves to highlight just how good the remastering is.

An excellent presentation of an excellent film.