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Movies that feel like The 400 Blows (1959)

If you loved The 400 Blows, the closest films we have are Rebel Without a Cause (1955), How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024) and Leave No Trace (2018). All three share The 400 Blows' contemplative and wistful feel, which is what we rank on before quality. 10 of the 12 picks below are included with a subscription right now on Netflix, HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video and others, checked against today's data.

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

🍅 99% Rotten Tomatoes8 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. François Truffautcontemplativewistful
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If The 400 Blows hit the spot, these will too

Rebel Without a Cause poster
Rebel Without a Cause
1955 · dir. Nicholas Ray
🍅 91%7.6drama

Both keep coming back to the same thing: growing up

After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.

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How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies poster
How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies
2024 · dir. Pat Boonnitipat
🍅 98%7.9drama

Both are built on the same subject: growing up

The difference: Made in the 2020s, in a different era of the craft

M, a university dropout low on money and luck, volunteers to take care of his terminally ill grandmother, in the hope of pocketing an inheritance.

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Leave No Trace poster
Leave No Trace
2018 · dir. Debra Granik
🍅 100%7.1drama

Contemplative and wistful in the same breath

A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.

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Malena poster
Malena
2000 · dir. Giuseppe Tornatore
🍅 54%7.4drama

Contemplative drama, and it commits to that

The difference: Critics were much harder on this one

12-year-old Renato experiences three significant events on the same day: the beginning of the Second World War, getting a bike, and witnessing the arrival of the gorgeous Malèna. Through his eyes, we see the curse of beauty and loneliness of Malena, whose husband is presumed dead, and, through his soul, we see his love for her.

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8½ poster
1963 · dir. Federico Fellini
🍅 97%8drama

Wistful drama in both cases

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

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Like Father, Like Son poster
Like Father, Like Son
2013 · dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
🍅 86%7.8drama

Drama built on stillness, twice over

Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.

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Biutiful poster
Biutiful
2010 · dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu
🍅 66%7.4drama

Both sit in the same wistful register

This is a story of a man in free fall. On the road to redemption, darkness lights his way. Connected with the afterlife, Uxbal is a tragic hero and father of two who's sensing the danger of death. He struggles with a tainted reality and a fate that works against him in order to forgive, for love, and forever.

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Boyhood poster
Boyhood
2014 · dir. Richard Linklater
🍅 97%7.9drama

The same drama instincts

The film tells a story of a divorced couple trying to raise their young son. The story follows the boy for twelve years, from first grade at age 6 through 12th grade at age 17-18, and examines his relationship with his parents as he grows.

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Kes poster
Kes
1970 · dir. Ken Loach
🍅 100%7.9drama

Both play drama straight

Bullied at school and ignored and abused at home by his indifferent mother and older brother, Billy Casper, a 15-year-old working-class Yorkshire boy, tames and trains his pet kestrel falcon whom he names Kes. Helped and encouraged by his English teacher and his fellow students, Billy finally finds a positive purpose to his unhappy existence.

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Pather Panchali poster
Pather Panchali
1955 · dir. Satyajit Ray
🍅 98%8.2drama · history

Common ground: black and white

The difference: Sits closer to history than The 400 Blows does

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. Alone, his wife, Sarbojaya, looks after her rebellious daughter, Durga, and her young son, Apu, as well as Harihar's elderly aunt Indir. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life, while their parents suffer the daily indignities heaped upon them.

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Breaking Away poster
Breaking Away
1979 · dir. Peter Yates
🍅 95%7.7drama · comedy

Cut from the same drama cloth

The difference: Leans harder into comedy than The 400 Blows does

Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his three friends: the comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends' and parents' annoyance.

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Eighth Grade poster
Eighth Grade
2018 · dir. Bo Burnham
🍅 99%7.3comedy · drama

The same preoccupation in both: adolescence

Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.

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The best-reviewed films that share The 400 Blows’ defining feeling.