[In The 400 Blows, the] presence of a camera aimlessly set in motion, breaking self-consciously with the canons of traditional filmic representation and setting forth a world that has no rapport with the film music, seems to confirm immediately our assertion that the absurd informs Truffaut's early work in its most basic formal aspects. It is, of course, at the most primary level of mimesis that these absurdist configurations are most evident, since Truffaut's representation of episodic experience is grounded in plots that are essentially discontinuous series of non-causally related events that reflect the radical, if often incoherent freedom that Truffaut's characters enjoy. (p. 184)

Whatever may be the autobiographical element in Truffaut's portrayal of Antoine's being branded as a delinquent, it is clear that his manner of depicting how the boy stumbles into crime and incarceration is grounded both in an absurdist sense of fortuitous being and an existentialist...