Breathless

Breathless was the big breakthrough film for celebrated director Jean-Luc Godard. It stands as one of the highly influential films that kicked off the French New Wave, a radicalised approach to cinema that discarded the accepted rules of film editing and other traditional filmmaking techniques. You'll find Breathless on just about every 'you must watch' list, such was its impact back in 1960, though it's probably unfair to watch it now for the first time with this weight of expectation. Most of Godard's rule-breaking is done casually, and this seemingly casual approach is an integral part of this rule-breaking itself. It's alive and it's natural and it skips along with an ironic sense of disregard; a film characterised by it's modern daring and youthful confidence.



Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a young Parisian criminal who shoots a cop and tries to hide out with an American girl named Patricia (Jean Seberg) that he once hooked up with. Narrative-speaking, there's not much more to it than that. The film starts with Michel just walking around doing what he likes, there isn't much context to it - he just talks to himself and breezily steals a car without much of a care. I couldn't help but smile at the gall of this gaul - it's all so effortlessly cool, it's easy to see how it could've had an impact back in 1960. He's a fugitive and an anti-hero - it's the cinema of the youth, rebellious and almost disrespectful, making its mark with European frankness.





Belmondo has a slacker essence that gives him a certain magnetism, his character idolises Bogart as the height of gangster 'cool'. He's also preoccupied with sex (he virtually badgers Patricia into sleeping with him), which puts him entirely at odds with the stoic and unneedy heroes of American cinema. The effectiveness of the film's famous final scene has a lot to do with Belmondo's casual, devil-may-care performance. It's fatal destiny.



Godard's whole approach to filmmaking is like he's an alien who's been given a camera... it must've been hard for him, as a fan of cinema, to break from established film grammar so completely. Breathless skips along at this fine, effortless pace and then comes to a standstill for this massive scene between Michel and Patricia in a hotel room, where information floats up to the surface in a long and seemingly adlibbed conversation. Other interesting techniques include the way the camera stays focused on just one person while two characters have a conversation... an instance of this is when Patricia tells Michel that she's pregnanrt and the camera doesn't cut to Michel (for his reaction) as expected. Another one is the way a scene cuts from sentence to sentence during a montage, or the way a camera pulls along ahead of characters in long tracking shots.



DIRECTOR: Jean-Luc Godard

WRITER/SOURCE: Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffant

KEY ACTORS: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville



RELATED TEXTS:

- Along with Breathless, the other two films that ushered in the French New Wave were The 400 Blows and Hiroshima Mon Amour.

- Remade as the American film Breathless in 1983, starring Richard Gere.

- Similar films (no doubt influenced by Breathless) include Pepe le Moko, Touki Bouki, Le Doulos (also starring Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Shoot the Piano Playere.

- See also Godard's Band of Outsiders.



AWARDS

BAFTAs - nominated for Best Foreign Actress (Jean Seberg)