VIDEO : STRIKING `BLOWS' FOR TRUFFAUT'S STYLE.

Byline: Rob Lowman Daily News Entertainment Editor

Watching all the hoopla surrounding ``Star Wars,'' it's interesting to note that the effects-laden extravaganza is so much less cinematic than the works of Francois Truffaut.

The French film director made his life art.

Truffaut, who died in 1984 at 52, created a world in film that mirrored his own. Through his alter ego, Antoine Doinel (played beautifully in five films by Jean-Pierre Leaud), Truffaut gave us wonderfully complex human stories - as entertaining as they are resonant. With films like ``Jules and Jim'' and ``Day for Night,'' Truffaut examined complex interpersonal relationship deftly and delicately while always maintaining a critical eye.

Truffaut, who had been a critic before he became a filmmaker, understood the language of cinema, studying the masters - from French directors like Jean Vigo and Jean Renoir to American greats like Orson Welles and - one of his personal favorites - Alfred Hitchcock.

That his first film, ``The 400 Blows,'' is a masterpiece is a tribute to Truffaut artistry, though. He was able to take what he had learned and create a lyrical style all his own, seamlessly melding his humanism with a formal structuralism.

The semi-autobiographical film tells the story of Doinel, who like Truffaut comes from a dysfunctional home and eventually ends up in a center for juvenile delinquents. ``The 400 Blows'' is, as others have stated, the standard by which all films about youths are judged. The title comes from a French idiom for the amount of pain that anyone can bear.

Anyone who has seen ``The 400 Blows,'' will be haunted by the final freeze frame of the troubled Doinel after he has fled the center. Truffaut has let the camera track Doinel to the ocean. There he finds both hope and another trap. The sea offers a promise of something more than his small life, but it also has stopped his escape. He can go no farther, and he doesn't know what to do. It is - like life - an ambiguous moment.

Coinciding with the 40th Anniversary of ``The 400 Blows,'' Fox Lorber Cinema has released six of his classic films on video and DVD. In addition to the Cannes Film Festival winner ``The 400 Blows,'' the titles include: ``Shoot the Piano Player,'' ``The Last Metro,'' ``Confidentially Yours,'' ``Love on the Run'' and ``Two English Girls.''

The six Truffaut classics have been restored fully with new translation and subtitles, and are available on VHS for a suggested retail price of either $29.98 or $19.98 and on DVD for $29.98. This is the first time the Truffaut films, with the exception of ``The 400 Blows,'' have been available on DVD. Two of the DVD titles - ``The 400 Blows'' and ``Jules and Jim,'' which will come out in August - will have a running scene-by-scene commentary track. All six titles also will be available in a VHS six-pack for a suggested retail price of $119.98.

There has been much celebration of Truffaut recently, including a new book - ``Truffaut: A Biography'' by Antoine De Baecque and Serge Toubiana (Knopf; $30) - as well as retrospective film series in New York City and in Los Angeles at the Nuart. However, it's been vastly overshadowed by the ``Star Wars'' hype.

There is a certain irony, though. Truffaut, along with other influential French directors such as Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer, was responsible for the ``New Wave.'' Novelle vague referred to a creative burst of energy from these filmmakers, who through their films and writings championed the auteur theory - the idea that directors, in essence, are the authors of their movies.

It was through their efforts that Hollywood directors John Ford and Howard Hawks became known as artists rather than hired hands, paving the way for the adulation that we heap upon people like Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. I bet, though, all of them would defer to the genius of Truffaut.

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Photo

Photo: Jean-Pierre Leaud is Antoine Doinel in ``The 400 Blows,'' one of five Truffaut films in which Leaud portrayed Doinel.