[Les Quatre Cents Coups, "Antoine et Colette" from L'Amour à Vingt ans (Love at Twenty), Baisers volés, and Domicile conjugal] together form a remarkable work: an extended portrait of the éducation sentimentale of a young man portrayed by an actor who is growing, physically as well as emotionally and intellectually, during the course of twelve years of intermittent shooting…. As the series progressed, Léaud became a significant collaborator, and the ultimate portrait we have of Antoine Doinel may owe as much to Léaud [who played Doinel in the films] as to its ostensible model, Truffaut. (pp. 17, 19)

[There] is the sense that Antoine shares with Truffaut and Léaud the belief that the reality of art is somehow more valid, more enticing than the reality of the street. From Antoine's first adoring obsession with Balzac to his symbolic infatuation with Kyoko in Domicile conjugal, literary reality always...