Les Quatre Cents Coups. Un film per riflettere (ancora) sulla relazione educativa

On 4 May 1959, Les Quatre Cents Coups, a movie directed by François Truffaut, was screened at the 12th Cannes Film Festival. 1959 was a particularly important year for French cinema and Truffaut's debut feature movie was destined to leave an indelible mark in the history of international cinematography, both for the quality of the filmic narration and for the way the director staged childhood and adolescence, so much so that it has become an inescapable point of reference for scholars in the field of psychology and pedagogy. In a particular way, the final sequence, with its still-image on the protagonist’s face ‘in flight’, towards a where that remains suspended, assumes extraordinary relevance for the filmic and pedagogical analysis of the educational relationship, the peculiarities of which need to be explored in order to fully understand the role played by adults (parents, teachers, educators, operators). In this sense, the authors focus their attention on the context, on Truffaut's life, on the genesis of the movie and on some key sequences, trying to restore the sense and topicality of a film work of unquestionable social and cultural value.