Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

One day I've read somewhere that everything has been written, but not by me. Well, this review or essay will try to do what Godard did himself with À bout de souffle; everything has been done but not by him.

I have to admit that the first time I watched À bout de souffle I hated it to its deep core. I called JLG a dilettant and a boring  pretentious wannabe filmmaker. You what? I think Godard intentionally  made a film that could provoque this kind of reaction. He likes to  provoke the spectator to make him think. Well it worked because many  years after, the film stuck in my mind and different parts of it were  recurent memries. After watching it again lately I had the urge to write  down, or type down if you prefer, some thoughts about it.

Something new, no something different!
At the first viewing of À bout de souffle I must admit that I didn't knew very much who was Humphrey Bogart,  Jean-Paul Belmondo or even Jean-Luc Godard himself. I am currently  reading Antoine De Baecque's biography on Godard, that I deeply  recommend by the way. The more I know about Godard the more I understand  and appreciate his films.

The story of À bout de souffle is  simple and very Hollywood film noir oriented: a young man Michel  Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) steals a car and on the run on a  provincial route to Paris he kills a policeman. He goes to Paris and  tries to get paid for some earlier car thief and most importantly he  wants to find Patricia (Jean Seberg) an American girl he "likes". Michel  plays a tough guy "à la Humphrey Bogart" and even his twitch is  inspired by Bogart's character in The Big Sleep; Bogart constantly rubs his ear.

From  the first scene and even the first words pronounced in À bout de  souffle we actually know that Poiccard is doomed: Je suis con! Ah ce que  je suis con! "I'm dumb! Ah! I'm so dumb!". Just before he steals a car.  Then he goes on the run and kills a cop. In these first scenes all the  genius and creativity of Godard is demonstrated: the jump-cut and the  narrative. The editing of the scene on the road is done with such slight  angles between the takes that the viewer is destabilized. It's  unnatural and if you asked a technician of the time he would say the  scene just can't work. Well, it works very well! Without mentionning it  or giving any indications on it the scenes are cut like a comic book.  They seem to be shot in continuity but the eye knows that it is not the  case. Same thing happens when Michel shots the policeman we see the gun  for a second, we hear the gunshot and after we see the policeman falling  near a tree. But we don't actually see Michel shooting the gun and the  bullet entering the body. Why? Well Godard took for granted that any  spectactor has seen this scene a thousand times shot the same classic  way. Well, at first it may seem that Godard didn't knew how to shot a  like that but it's the complet opposite he exactly knew how anyone would  have shot that scene so he does something completly different.

If Antoine Doinel was François Truffaut, is Michel Poiccard Jean-Luc Godard?
There  have been three biographies written on Jean-Luc Godard, a man that  always tried to be mysterious and provocate with his films and  declarations. I don't think that at nearly 80 years old he will ever  write an autobiography, because there are so much in his films about  himself that it is our job to take all the elements and put them  together to try to understand the man, his oeuvre, and life itself.

Michel  Poiccard represents the teenage years of JLG, like his character he  used to steal, lie and sleep with many girls. Godard was in his teenage  years a soft delinquent from a wealthy family on his mother side; the  Monods. Like Poiccard, he tried to be against the current by stealing in  order to get a little for each day. The long scene in Patricia's  apartment represents the juvenile preoccupations; getting up at 12PM,  sleeping and fooling around without any real ambition in life. Like  Quentin Tarantino does in his films, Jean-Luc Godard gives lines to his  characters that explains his preoccupations and his ideas. The interview  scene when Patricia asks: "Quelle est votre ambition dans la vie?" for  the second time and the writer answers: "Être immortel et ensuite  mourrir" we can interpret thoses lines as the lines of Godard himself:  with this film I want to become immortal. In the way of being recognized  forever in the memory of humanity instead of never die.

Deep Impact or Jean-Luc Godard is Cinema
As of today, 50 years after its release, À bout de souffle is recognized by initiates as a masterpiece. To others, its the symbol  of the French New Wave, and for some it's just another boring french  film.

It's appreciation is not the most important, it's its impact on filmmaking and its reflexion of Cinema itself. In À bout de souffle when can find many references from the many filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard  admired, the three scenes where conversations are muted by noises, just  like Alfred Hitchcock's films. The use of handheld cameras. The  exteriors filmed on the Champs Élysés and the streets of Paris instead  of the studios. The many improvised scenes like Roberto Rossellini's  Neorealist films and we can go on for another 1000 words on the  references. In France the impact was huge and after this approach or  this way of filming inspired the generation of the second golden Age of  Hollywood Cinema the 1970's: Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola,  Robert Altman, Terrence Malick, etc.

À bout de souffle carried every ingredient that Godard praised in 1950's Hollywood Cinema  and reinterpreted its recipe to serve it back. Sometimes an external  point of view gives you the push you needed to push yourself to a level  you wouldn't expect yourself to able to attain.

If you don't like Godard, you don't like Cinema! to cite someone I don't remember whom but I think it was so right.

This is an uncommon lenght for a review here but I think great films inspire dense reviews. À bout de souffle is a passionate film from a passionate filmmaker.

Last updated: 2010-10-19 09:40:13 by MichaelParent

Michel Poiccard lives in the quicksilver moment with no thought to the future, his reflection a dark imitation of his nitrous fantasies, his last sputtered breath the cold apathy of denial and judgment. He is small time crook who steals American cars; this adrenaline rush satiates him with the angry growl of an eight cylinder Ford. Michel exists in a narcissistic self-imposed exile from society, loving himself while perfecting his signature gesture; a gentle tracery of his pouting lips and dangling cigarette. He shows little emotion, the murder of a police officer less important than his scorned and tepid affections.

Jean-Luc Godard toys with Hollywood narrative conventions: he includes rash jump cuts while retaining a linear dialogue patterns, and he moves his camera into the streets and the tiny apartments…most of all he transports the audience from voyeur to accomplice. Godard’s close-up photography imparts a certain cold impassionate distance between the characters, filling the frame with their beautiful visage, separating them from each other but creating intimacy with the audience.

In one fantastic sequence, Michel visits his friend to receive a letter and Godard films in one long three-minute (at least) tracking shot, moving the camera fluidly through the corridor of the bank and altering our point-of-view, as if we have fallen through the sprocket-hole and entered the world of our own Celluloid Hero. At times his editing is barely visible and others it’s meant to confuse and disorient our perceptions, such as the conversation between Patricia and her boss in the restaurant.

The bombastic score imbues the film with an overblown Hollywood veneer, giving some insight into Michel’s personality and view of his world: it balances precariously on farce while retaining the dignity of the plot. Though Godard takes the film out of Michel’s world momentarily we basically experience his egocentrism, his puffed-up tiny life. But Michel is not surprised when his true love destroys him and he only has contempt for her actions: it is her fault. Patricia mimes her lover’s subtle gesture and turns her back on his breathless corpse: has she paid her last respects or has she been tainted by Michel’s nihilism? Final Grade: (A+)

All reviews copyright Korova, Ltd. Visit Alex at his Home Theatre Blog, http://korovatheatrepresents.blogspot.com/

One of the most important films ever made, Breathless is a masterpiece of the French New Wave. Directed by legendary director Jean-Luc Godard, and written by Francois Truffaut (The 400 Blows, 1959; Jules And Jim, 1961) - another leading force of the highly influential cinematic movement - this riveting romance-thriller changed the face of cinema in a number of ways. Most crucially, it freed the medium from the dominant bourgeois culture of the West. It challenged the classical Hollywood style of glamorous star power (producers and actors) and the meticulous, economical (but predicable) studio filmmaking, providing an alternative method to creating motion pictures.
 
Breathless stars Jean Seberg as Patricia Franchini, a free-spirited young lady who works for a news company, and Jean-Paul Belmondo as Michael Poiccard, a dashing young car thief who seeks temporary refuge in Patricia’s room after killing a policeman. Both of them know each other but only scarcely. Michael is mostly preoccupied with seducing Patricia into sleeping with him and migrating together to Rome. Patricia, on the other hand, tries to ignore his advances but cannot resist his charm. Meanwhile, newspapers and the police close down on Michael who shows no concern towards the noose that is slowly tightening on him.
 
Breathless challenged the classical Hollywood style of continuity cutting as well. Godard broke the conventions of cinema as it was known at that time, inventing a whole new film language through the frequent use of jump-cuts (sometimes disorientating) and on-location shooting (an influence of Italian Neo-Realism of the 40s and 50s). In the final shot, Godard breaks the fourth wall. He shows a close-up shot of Patricia looking directly into the camera. It is sometimes used, even in contemporary film such as P.T Anderson’s Magnolia (1999), to great effect.
 
In Breathless, Godard is perhaps trying to deliver a sense of sarcasm through this final parting shot: “Yes, there is an important cinematic rule that says ‘Actors should not look directly into the camera.’ But I am Godard. I am a rebel, I do not believe in rules. I believe in the auteur theory. Pure cinema should enjoy true freedom of expression.”
 
For most parts of the middle section of the film, it is shot in a small room where the two leads are. Despite space constraint, Godard not only manages to eliminate the claustrophobicness of the lengthy sequence, he makes it remarkably engaging through mood setting, in this case, a sensual, near-erotic one. Throughout his time in film, Godard has continued to push the boundaries on the structural possibilities of cinema. Even though it is a debut, Breathless remains to be one of his most lasting works and probably the most remembered and studied as well.
 
SCORE: 8.5/10
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