Jean-Luc Godard and Breathless
Introduction
Jean-Luc Godard is an icon of post-modern intellectual discourses which rely on his work to
legitimize many key concepts and illustrate the departure of art from modernism. In a way, he
is the only one living filmmaker to enjoy the status of a film philosopher rather than a film
director. This stalwart genius who vehemently interrogates the very idea of individual genius
is now paradoxically a demigod for many experimental filmmakers across the globe. In other
words, he is a filmmakers’ filmmaker.
Learning Objectives:
To enable the learner to:
i. To understand the role of Godard in the evolution of contemporary cinema
ii. To watch and analyse Breathless as a representative film of the French New Wave
iii. To familiarise with the cultural, social and political contexts of Godard’s films
iv. To provide the theoretical backdrop for appreciating experimental cinema
Life and Career
Jean-Luc Godard was born in 1930 in Paris to wealthy parents of Franco-Swiss descent with
aristocratic roots. The Protestant faith of his cosmopolitan family in a predominantly Catholic
France and the elite circles around his mother and father who was a physician, made his
childhood privileged and distinct. His family moved to Nyon, a French bordering small town
in Switzerland, when he was four years old and Godard attended school there living a life of
high mobility and affluence. As he stated in an interview, at the age of thirty-three, “There
are Godards like there are foxes” his bondage to the family was so strong and strange
simultaneously because he said it when he was estranged from the family (MacCabe). This
ambivalence since childhood is formative in the artistic career of Godard because he was an
aberrant child who defied the rules of nobility and stole the expensive books of his
grandfather to sell to the second-hand book sellers, not for money but for adventure. Such a
childhood of rebellion against elitism permeates his work and so demands our understanding
of the personal history of Godard especially as he says: “I have a feeling that I’m not asking
for power or riches or anything, because I had more than plenty until I was fifteen. More than
anyone. It was very different from Truffaut, for example.” The affluent life around the lake
Lac Léman moving between France and Switzerland was disturbed slightly in World War II;
but thanks to the Swiss neutrality the Godards spent time at peace. In 1941 Godard entered
the Collège de Nyon which offered excellent education for the elite in classics, art, music and
science. Jean-Luc was a noted skier at school but played the fool occasionally where the
male-female segregation existed in class rooms and in school dramas till 1945.
In 1945, after the end of the War Jean-Luc entered Lycée Buffon in Paris leaving his parents
who were parting slowly and a subject of gossip till their divorce in 1952. His life as student
collided with his education in the cine-clubs of the capital. But the family was unaware of his
passion when they heard about his failure in exams and saw him as a black sheep. In 1948 he
returned to Switzerland after failing in the baccalaureate. Next year he went to Paris and
joined a boarding school for retest and passed the exam. He estranged himself from the world
of formal language and etiquette in the family and caricatured the family members for their
bourgeois hypocrisy in his self-made books. Cinema was not yet his chosen art, he painted a
lot and his mother organized an exhibition of his paintings in 1949. The same year he
registered at Sorbonne for a certificate in Anthropology but did not attend classes and luckily,
he could understand the intellectual trend of the time by his exposure to structural
anthropology. Jean Rouch began his series of African anthropological films at that time and
Godard frequented the film circles and visited Cinetheque a museum like facility founded by
Henri Langlois and Gerges Franju in 1936 for housing and screening films. That was like a
film school for young Godard.
1950 is an important year in the life of Godard because his father closed his clinic and went
to the USA with the children where Jean-Luc started a long journey to South America that
had a big impact on his mind. But his parents arranged him a job in a Swiss construction
company and thereafter he joined Swiss television service in Zurich where he was jailed for
theft from his own employers. His father got him out of jail and persuaded him to go to a
mental hospital specialising in psychotherapy. This episode created a serious may be final
break with the family and after returning from the hospital he joined the construction
company again and saved his wages for his first film, a documentary on the construction of
the dam at La Grande Dixence entitled ‘Opération ‘béton’ (Operation Concrete). In the
meanwhile, Godard with Maurice Schérer a literature teacher and writer (took the pseudonym
Éric Rohmer for his mother would have been shocked for his connection with cinema) and
Rivette, founded the short-lived film journal La Gazette du Cinéma, which saw publication of
five issues in 1950. He wrote short but powerful articles on films under the pseudonym Hans
Lucas in this journal. It was a time when film was looked upon as a medium and rejected by
the champions of high culture and the journal struggled for the status of cinema as a great art
form. For this goal the journal published a short text by Paul Valery and a long lecture by
Jean-Paul Sartre “Why the Cinema is not a Bad School”. Godard wrote in every issue about
films like Jean Genet’s masterpiece The Song of Love (Un Chant d’amour) to Hollywood
classics. In his writing the influence of Andre Bazin lights each word and an ideology of film
as a revolutionary art underscores. When Bazin and his friends founded the journal Cahiers
du Cinema in 1951 Godard became a young film critic contributing reviews and articles
regularly.
Godard made a short film A Flirtatious Woman in 1955 in Geneva. Richard Bordy says, “His
three short films of 1957-58 are not cinema but a substitute for cinema. In effect, they are
conceptual gags that allowed Godard to exercise his powers of verbal invention”. When
Claude Chabrol left his job in the publicity department of Fox film production company he
invited Godard to receive the post. This was a turning point in the life of Godard and his
friends. Chabrol had began his Les Cousins, (The Cousins) Truffaut was preparing for The
400 blows, and Rivette was busy working for Paris Belongs to Us. Godard tried all means for
making his own film. That was the beginning of a new generation of film makers known later
as the French New Wave who emerged dramatically out of their hard labour and persistence
for a cinema of anti-capitalist politics that might deny the semioticity of the genre with
director as auteur/ author. Pierre Braunberger produced the short film All the Boys are Named
Patrick directed by Godard. Another short Charlotte and Her Boyfriend followed this.
In 1959 all his Cahiers friends were in Cannes Festival, an indigent Godard in Paris
desperately sought money and “borrowed” from the till of the journal for making his journey
to Cannes. There he met Truffaut and Chabrol and started working on a story once discussed
with them called Breathless which later became the first feature directed by Jean-Luc
Godard. Georges de Beauregard financed and made possible the long-deferred dream of
Godard. Breathless became one of the great milestones in the history of cinema. It was the
beginning of an extraordinarily prolific career followed by success after success.
For the sake of study, we can divide the films of Godard into four periods:
New Wave Period (1960-1967) comprising Breathless (1960), The Little Soldier (1961), My
Life to Live (1962), The Carabiniers and Contempt (1963), Band of Outsiders (1964), A
Married Woman (1964), and The Chinese (1967) as the culmination of his political statement
through the medium followed by a more sensational and abstract Weekend (1967) in which
Karl Marx was famously placed with Jesus Christ. Breathless is the most celebrated film
from this period and we can discuss more about it later. The Chinese might be considered as a
departure from the obviously interior world of individuals that was explored since Breathless
for a direct focus on politics. The familiar world of relationships and conflicts within
individuals evolved into a chaotic reality of social unrest and political uncertainty through
these films. In other words, Goddard started from the ABC of bourgeoise film sensibility and
denounced it completely for an inconvenient depiction of truth following the anti-war
movement in the time of American invasion of Vietnam and the Marxist aesthetics of the
time.
Revolutionary Years (1968-1979) Godard’s movies like, The Joy of Learning (1968), Film
Like Any Other (1968), British Sounds (1969) Wind from the East (1970), Struggle in Italy
(1971), Everything is Well (1972), Here and Elsewhere (1974), Number Two (1975) belong
to the Revolutionary Years phase. Among these films The Joy of Learning is an instance of
Goddard’s philosophy of making political films politically. He began the shooting of the film
before the events of 1968 and finished it just after the end. Referring to Fredrick Nietzsche’s
Gay Science/ Joyful Wisdom (1882) this film discusses the existential angst of modern world
and travels beyond the limits of cinematic realism for a deeper philosophical debate with the
viewers. The director engages the spectators in an intimate conversation leaving behind the
story of Patricia and Émile.
Cycle of Video Experimentation (1975 onward) from Number Two in 1975 Godard
experiments with video as a tool that produced a number of works like Everyman for Himself
(1980), Passion (1982), and others. History of Cinema (1980-1998), a monumental work that
took almost two decades to finish is the most important work among them. It is an
overarching essay on the history of images, sounds, music, art and literature. Collages and
superimpositions portray ideas and impressions with documentary style comments and
interviews in this experimental series. The advent of video art, video installations and digital
art could transform the very concept of video in recent times and Godard might be a
significant contributor.
Recent Contemplative Period since 1980s to the present the work of Godard takes a more
contemplative turn crossing the aesthetic of his own explicit political style. He is speaking
both philosophy and politics in a more subtle and self-reflexive fashion. David Sterritt called
it subjunctive cinema “in which every important gesture, each image, sound, cut,
superimposition, and so on- is less a link in an expository chain” (35). Instead of conveying
something, everything is in a process in these films that question and revise both the films
and the filmmaker. Hail Mary1985, New Wave (1990), For Ever Mozart (1996), Film
Socialism (2010), 3X3D (2013), Goodbye Language (2014) and The Image Book (2018) are
best examples to grasp the dialogue Godard started with himself and later with his fans. His
inexhaustive passion to divulge the complex depth of human mind in a more complex
cinematic language and the exhibition of his mastery over the medium might distract even his
admirers from these recent adventures. But Godard goes on without a halt even at the age of
eighty eight.
By itemizing Godard’s oeuvre so neatly we may miss the unconventional trajectory of his
career that resisted all categorization in all possible means. This includes his many shorts,
docufictions and documentaries not to mention yet to be named experiments with film
making. Formalistic look at his works reveals them in a collision between realism and
formalism in 1960-1968 as in films such as Breathless and a phase of making political films
politically with Jean-Pierre Gorin and Dziga-Vertov group-a collective of far-left artists in
1968-1975 and a mystical turn since 1976 for a more personal cinema. The more
experimental ways of looking at himself developed by Godard are attempts to write his own
biography with others’ words.
Breathless (1960)
Godard’s Breathless appeared in a time of drastic changes in sensibility throughout the world.
As historian Eric Hobsbawm stated, 1960s was the decade of cultural revolution across the
world leaving behind the bitter experience of World War II. Culture rather than economy or
politics per se took the centre stage of debates across the world. This cultural turn gave birth
to Beat generation in the USA, New Wave in French cinema, Rhythm & Blues and Soul in
music and witnessed the emergence of Third World in political ideology. In the domain of
philosophy existentialism achieved almost the status of a religion or way of life as Jean-Paul
Sartre as the high priest and prophet. All these points are important in understanding the
movie Breathless and its director Godard because these are not mere undercurrents but the
substance for both.
Originally titled À bout de souffle, meaning “end of breath” or “being winded” travelled to
English speaking countries as Breathless. Even after six decades of it release, Breathless is
the most widely known and frequently seen work of Godard (Sterritt 39). In terms of
cinematic syntax, the jump-cuts, character asides, breaking the eyeline match in continuity
editing and characters addressing the audience with thoughts, feelings, and instructions
Breathless ruthlessly shattered the realist traditions. But it could create a large group of
fanatic fans everywhere and as Michelangelo Antonioni said it divided cinema history into
pre-Godard and post-Godard.
The story is based on a scenario by Truffaut. Richard Brody says, “His original plan had been
to use Truffaut’s story outline and merely add dialogue to it. Instead, he remodelled the entire
story, reconfiguring the action, adding and subtracting characters, and drastically shifting the
emphases.” Breathless opens by showing the front page of Paris Flirt, a newspaper, on it the
ad image of a girl in skimpy dress holding a doll, who resembles the heroine, and the words
“So I am a son of bitch”, “After all, it’s got to be done. It has to”, obviously spoken by the
decadent existentialist hero, a white machismo with a large cigar in mouth. His name is
Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a rascally Parisian who loves France and living on
stealing cars, a seducer rogue with lots of connection but few friends. David Sterritt
continues, “Looking directly toward the camera, he surveys the scene around him and lifts his
hand to his mouth, rubbing his thumb across his lips in a nervous back-and-forth
motion…Later we’ll learn that this thumb-to-lips gesturer is borrowed from the tough-guy
persona often adopted by Hollywood star Humphrey Bogart…” (57). Michele’s self is the
product of cinema at least in terms of his movements and gesture. This “cultural
kleptomania” is revealed when we realize that he is a Bogart fan. The cinephiles and the
fandom everywhere consciously or unconsciously model their lives on cinematic characters
and images and this process makes cinema a social force.
In the following scene Michel steals a car with the help of a woman and starts his flight from
the scene without giving any attention to the woman. This disregard to fellow creatures is the
essential part of his loner existence that turns into a disregard to his own self and life in the
end. When a police officer on motorcycle chases him for overspeed Michel shoots him and
flees on foot into the open fields of countryside. In the following scenes we see him meeting
Patricia who sells newspaper but wants to be a writer for the New York Herald Tribune that
she sells. When he persuades her to come with him for Italy, she is in confusion and Michel
sees another woman and steals money from her. Next, he tries in vain to find an underworld
guy who owes him money. Then he visits Patricia in her place and sneaks into her room like
a peeping Tom. Following is a twenty-six-minute sequence that takes place in the room
mostly showing Michel and Patricia in their own world of making love, teasing, sleeping,
waking up and talking about love, life and other things. When Patricia reveals that she is
pregnant Michel receives it with cold heart and the same numbness continues in the face of
the blaring headlines announcing he is wanted for murder. First Patricia helps him hide from
the police but she turns him in when the detectives hint at her deportation and criminal
charges. This takes place in very familiar film noir surroundings in a friend’s studio where
they found a new hideout. Patricia calls the police when Michel goes out for buying food but
warns him afterwards, probably out of love or guilt. Again, the chasing starts. The heart
throbbing speed of the action and camera verité sequences make his fleeing live. But he is
shot in the back and dies in the street, closing his eyes with his own hand under Patricia’s
blank gaze.
The above gist of the action illustrates best Godard’s own often quoted critique of Hollywood
citing Griffith that goes like “all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”. The fact of
the matter about Breathless is quite contrary to this storyline. Raoul Courtyard’s supple
cinematography, using a hand-held Arriflex camera and the score by Martial Solal that cites
from Mozart, Bach etc, and the visual quotes from Bergman, Samuel Fuller, Fritz Lang along
with allusions to William Faulkner, Dylan Thomas, Rilke, Maurice Sachs, use of paintings by
Auguste Renoir, Paul Klee make something extraordinary in the history of cinema. Right
from the unusual dedication that is to Monogram Pictures a production company, Godard
begins his play with the medium. Elliptical editing i.e. cutting the time of action from real
time and making shorter sequences, jump-cuts in which two sequential shots of the same
subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly creating the feeling of a jump
in time, and the self-reflexive cameo appearance of Godard and another French director Jean-
Pierre Melville as a writer are some of the frequently explored points. Long shots such as
Michel and Patricia strolling on the boulevard and too short sequences like the killing of the
cop collate to form a visual experience unsettling our coherent perception. Jean Seberg’s
acting that invited criticism from many reviewers was the advent of a new melancholic style.
“Godard appears to be entranced with Seberg as Michel is with the character she plays”,
writes David Sterritt (40). Concerning script later Godard said, I write the scenes while
having breakfast at the Dupont Montparnasse” or there was no script before the shoot. “This
idiosyncratic scripting produced a particular on-screen result. Godard’s spontaneous method
deliberately frustrated the actors’ attempts to compose their characters in any naturalistic or
psychologically motivated way… In effect, Godard’s actors were quoting Godard. Rather
than becoming their characters, they were imitating them (Brody101). Instead of directorial
instructions on acting he asked his actors to enter a café or a phone booth and exit without
paying etc. for a more spontaneous acting. In other words, the actors imitated characters not
living them or identifying with them. Similarly, the locations in Paris remain intact in the
film. Even though the expression is a cliché now, Paris is a character in the film and Godard
conceived it that way. The concept of flaneur, the bondage between characters and urban
spaces as consumers of the built environment is visible throughout the film. When we watch
Michel use the freshly bought newspaper for shining his shoes we realize the extent of
American consumerism that conquered French culture of the time and the trashing of print
modernity of Europe.
Conclusion
Breathless is not just a movie that changed the French film of the time. Its echoes
reverberated world cinema for many decades and even today it attracts film enthusiasts. By
exhibiting the seamy side of film as a medium it started a new language for self-reflexivity.
In line with the New Wave’s idea of cinema as a phenomenon of intelligence Breathless kept
an array of allusions, citations and codes beyond the obvious. “Become immortal and then
dies” is the wish of Patricia. This film remains immortal and unwilling to die!
Content Writer: Dr. Vellikkeel Raghavan and Mr. Antony George, Dept. of English and
Comparative Literature, Central University of Kerala
Reference
Brody, Richard. Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, New
York: Holt, 2008.ebook.
MacCabe, Collin. Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70, London: Bloomsbury, 2015.ebook.
Monaco, James. The New Wave, New York; Sag Harbour, 2004.ebook.
Sterritt, David. The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible, Cambridge: University
1999. Print.
Web Sources
1. Scott. A. “A Fresh Look Back at Right Now”
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/movies/23scott.html
2. French, Philip. “Breathless continues to shock and surprise 50 years on”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jun/06/film-jean-luc-godard-breathless-feature-
philip-french-french-new-wave
3. Cohen, Paula Marantz. “The Potency of Breathless”
https://theamericanscholar.org/the-potency-of-breathless/#.XYx7RPkzZPY
Film
(With a very useful intro by Michelangelo Antonioni)
https://vimeo.com/81983482
