Title
Theatrical advertisement from 1959The English title is a literal translation of the French that fails to capture its meaning, as the French title refers to the idiom "faire les quatre cents coups", meaning "to raise hell".[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.[11]
Filming locations
Most of The 400 Blows was filmed in Paris:[12]
- Avenue Frochot, Paris 9th
- Eiffel Tower, Champ de Mars, Paris 7th
- Montmartre, Paris 18th
- Palais de Chaillot, Trocadéro, Paris 16th
- Pigalle, Paris 9th
- Rue Fontaine
- Sacré Cœur, Paris 18th
The exception was for scenes filmed at the reform school, which were filmed in Honfleur, a small coastal town in the northern French province of Normandy. The final beach scene was filmed in Villers-sur-Mer, a few miles to the southwest.[13]
