Shot in the anamorphic format DyaliScope, the film stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, and Claire Maurier.

Written by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy, the film is about Antoine Doinel (a semi-autobiographical character), a misunderstood adolescent in Paris, who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior.

He steals a Royal typewriter from his stepfather's workplace to finance his plans to leave home, but being unable to sell it, he is apprehended while trying to return it.

Truffaut also included a number of friends (fellow directors) in bit or background parts, including himself and Philippe De Broca in the funfair scene; Jacques Demy as a policeman; Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Paul Belmondo as overheard voices (Belmondo's in the print works scene).

[7] In style, it references other French works—most notably a scene borrowed wholesale from Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduite.

[8] Besides being a character study, the film is an exposé of the injustices of the treatment of juvenile offenders in France at the time.

[10] On the first prints in the United States, subtitler and dubber Noelle Gillmor translated the title as Wild Oats, but the distributor Zenith did not like that and reverted it to The 400 Blows.

The website's critical consensus states, "A seminal French New Wave film that offers an honest, sympathetic, and wholly heartbreaking observation of adolescence without trite nostalgia.

Filmmakers Akira Kurosawa, Luis Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, Steven Spielberg, Jean Cocteau, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Richard Linklater, Tsai Ming Liang, Woody Allen, Richard Lester, P C Sreeram, Norman Jewison, Wes Anderson and Nicolas Cage have cited The 400 Blows as one of their favorite movies.