Breathless

I finally did it. I finished watching À bout de souffle. I kept putting it off because I usually have problem when everybody tells me that such and such film is the epitome of its era or it breaks all the rules, starts the revolution, and reinvents the cinema. That's why, probably, I cannot like Citizen Kane - try to watch the arguably best film ever made - you will be under a lot of pressure.

Well, À bout de souffle does not put you under the pressure, it takes you for a ride, and you follow for 90 minutes its incredibly young characters, common crook (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his American free-spirited girlfriend (Jean Seberg) on their journey on the streets of 1960-th Paris along with Raoul Coutard's legendary camera. I am not going to tell here how great the camera work was, how fantastic the music score and the views of Paris were - the fans of the film know that already. They also know about the beginning of French New Wave, and how it influenced the future cinema. I just want to say that the movie was made over forty years ago - the smoking was cool back then, and Belmondo made smoking look very sexy. Belmondo fascinates me in this film. I've seen him in a lot of later movies - he's always been good (I recommend Le Magnifique, 1973 and Le Professionnel,1981 ) - but in À bout de souffle he is not just good - he is embodiment of cool, his face changes its expression every moment, you can not take your eyes off him. Is it me or he does remind the very young Mick Jagger - not commonly handsome but irresistible and sexy? He and young (she was 21 at the time) Jean Seaborg made one of the best screen couples ever. My favorite scenes:

Michel drives the stolen car in the beginning of the film, and he starts to talk to us, the audience. The day is nice, the sun is shining, and the life is beautiful...

Michel and Patricia drive in the convertible. The wind plays with her short hair. We only see the back of her head and her neck. Michel tells her that he loves the girl with a beautiful neck, wrists, knees, but she is a chicken...

Patricia comes to the hotel to find Michel in her bed. They start talking about nothing and about very serious things. They smoke, she tries to find a good place for her new poster, and he wants to sleep with her. In the end of the scene, his face, he looks at her - there is love in that look...

There is more - I am sure everyone who saw it has his/her favorite scenes.

Jean-Luc Godard intended to shake the delicate world of cinema, that much is obvious. But did he intend to reinvent it? Whether it was his intention or not isn't the point, the point is this; he did. Jean-Luc Godard, and Francois Truffuat are the undisputed fathers of the French New Wave. Some cinephiles or historians may feel like pointing elsewhere, to Jean Renoir for example, protesting that he is truly the father of the French New Wave, I disagree entirely. The French New Wave was a product of the kindred spirits and talents of Godard and Truffaut. And no other film represents the French New Wave more coherently than Jean-Luc Godard's dazzling 1960 picture, 'Breathless'. Unorthodox and uninhibited. Raw and experimental. Godard broke every rule in the book, disavowed the laws of cinema, and scribed a new rule book, one where the pages are blank, and possibilities are endless. The story is so simple I can summarize the entire film in half of a sentence, but I refuse to give you or Godard the satisfaction. What counts in Breathless is not the story, but how the story is told. The very definition of 'cool', the film is robust in creativity, and exuberant in its flaws, and passionate about its reckless behavior. Self aware and rebellious. If there was no breathless, there would have been no Tarantino, if there was no French New Wave, the streak of genius that ran through the nineties and 2000s wouldn't have existed. Before Breathless, it was believed that films took money, that you had to find yourself in a place of authority to make a film. Breathless broke this misconception. Breathless makes you want to run outside and make the film of your life. Breathless made that possible, Breathless made the amateur the auteur, Breathless reinvented the face of the cinema, and made you believe that could too. All you need is a girl and gun.

There's a rogue with several pseudonyms in tow, a small time crook who several girls think is a beau, not the most, trustworthy guy, he'll spin a yarn or two and lie, so be careful where you keep your hard earned dough. He's been known to shoot and kill with firearm, after being chased by the local gendarme, so he's off to Italy, when he's collected fiscally, will take Patricia, who's been caged by Gallic charm.

Still a wonderful introduction to the world of French cinema of the time, but needs to be taken in context as familiarity breeds contempt and this was, after all, part of the foundations and a cornerstone of so much of what was to come. Imaginatively and innovatively directed by one of the greatest, with two flowers of the 60s revealing their early petals, and after smoking so many cigarettes, is it any wonder you'd struggle to catch your breath!

The film that both kicked off the French New Wave era and best represents it, "Breathless", is very entertaining. Perhaps there is some deep commentary on the human condition that I am completely missing, but as far as I can tell, this is an example of a film that is more concerned with style over substance.

The most important thing this film is remembered for is it's general disregard for the so called "rules" of filmmaking. It boasts groundbreaking cinematography, introducing the "Jump Cut" to make the film's pacing more kinetic. The other most notable aspect of this film is its dialogue: natural, yet almost poetic in its delivery.

The two leads are very charming, especially Belmondo's Michel. His suave demeanor and charismatic presence steals whatever scene he's in. Jean Seberg's turn as Patricia is more subtle and nuanced, making her role the more complex of the two, even if it's not as entertaining as Belmondo's performance.

As I have stated earlier, this is not a film that is concerned with plot as much as it is feel. Director Jean-Luc Goddard was trying to do something new for the cinema world, and succeeded in doing so. "Breathless" is a must see for any cinephile due to its long term impact on film as a medium.

8.5/10.

Together with François Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" (one of my favorites), Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" is considered the defining, instigating film of the French New Wave. It's more ironic and detached, less emotionally accessible than "The 400 Blows," and its technical innovations like jump cuts are perhaps even more surprising. For these reasons, I found "Breathless" easier to admire than to love—though by the end I grew to enjoy its too-cool- for-(film)-school tone.

Ironically, the pace of this movie isn't "breathless" at all. It begins abruptly and takes a while to get going: Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a character we barely know, drives a stolen car around, talks at the camera, and shoots a police officer who has tried to pull him over. Then he goes to Paris and tries to borrow money from some friends, while the police-shooting plot goes undeveloped. I only became fully engaged with the introduction of Patricia (Jean Seberg), a young American who sells newspapers on the Champs-Elysees. The relationship between Michel and Patricia is the heart of the film, especially a 25-minute-long scene in Patricia's apartment where the characters smoke, flirt, and laze around in bed, though nothing really happens. That's where I really started to admire "Breathless," because I was so captivated by a scene that, on paper, doesn't sound all that captivating.

Eventually the police catch onto Michel and launch a manhunt, but this doesn't really ratchet up the suspense. Instead, Michel is (or at least, Michel acts) aimless and nonchalant about the whole thing—this is not a typical "man on the run" movie. The cool jazz score adds to the hip, laid-back tone.

Since I didn't care for the movie too much until the scenes between Michel and Patricia, I believe a lot of the credit for the film's success has to go to the charismatic performances of Belmondo and Seberg. Belmondo, with a perpetual cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, is the archetypal cocky criminal who models himself after Humphrey Bogart (there's a great scene where he sees some Bogart photos and gets a vulnerable look in his eyes, as though saying "I'll never be as cool as this"). Seberg plays Patricia as a confused girl who is delighted by the attention she gets as an American in France.

It's easy to see why "Breathless" was so influential—the jump cuts, the ragged style perfectly match this story about amoral, aimless youth. Definitely a movie that expanded the range of stories the cinema can tell, and perhaps a major precursor to youth-oriented '60s culture. Nearly fifty years later, it still seems "hip," and still challenges our expectations of how movies should behave.