'The 400 Blows' -- 4 stars / 'Antoine and Colette' -- 3 1/2 stars (both directed by Francois Truffau

Francois Truffaut's feature, short retain their Gallic ability to charm

Shot in supple black and white in widescreen Dyalscope, Francois Truffaut's 1959 masterwork "The 400 Blows" seems forever young. Why? Partly because of its casting; partly because Truffaut knew how to communicate to an audience eager for unsentimental sentiment and a taste of the streets; and partly because the so-called New Wave dreamed into reality by Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and others may be fixed in a specific time of the 20th Century, but its most vivid pictures drink, eternally, from the fountain of youth.