BREATHLESS (1960)

A.K.A.: A bout de souffle

Country: France

Genre(s): Art Film / Crime

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo / Jean Seberg / Daniel Boulanger

Plot

Pulled over by a cop while driving to Paris in a stolen car, Michel shoots and kills the officer.  In Paris, he reunites with Patricia, an American woman with whom he previously enjoyed a brief fling, and tries to convince her to flee to Italy with him.

What I Liked

Paying homage to American noir films of the 1940s, yet with a lighter, inspiring mood that any self-respecting noir filmmakers vehemently avoid, “Breathless” still entertains more than fifty years after its debut.  Benefiting from director Jean-Luc Godard’s insistence upon demonstrating his knowledge of filmmaking tradition and then refuting that tradition at every opportunity, the film has a detached coolness reminiscent of a Miles Davis album, which makes the jazzy soundtrack all the more appropriate.  Using a variety of in-your-face techniques to completely fly in the face of the Hollywood studio methods of motion picture storytelling, Godard , along with his cast and crew, clearly had fun finding ways to reintroduce their audience to watching movies all over again.  It’s a film that, while representative of its director’s passion, never takes itself too seriously.  The influence of "Breathless" on Quentin Tarrantino's writing and directorial style is evident in nearly every line of dialogue and every shot.

Lead characters Michel and Patricia were the epitome of hipsters in the early 1960s,  They are stylish, young people trying ever so hard to live care-free lives, but are truthfully far too narcissistic to avoid getting into trouble.  This of course predicts the generational and social issues that would arise in the coming decade, in Europe as well as the United States as youth culture would play such an increasingly vital role in the shaping the times.

Jean-Paul Belmondo seems born to play Michel, bottom-feeder criminal bouncing from one scam to the next, a cigarette constantly dangling from between his smirking lips in imitation of his idol, Humphrey Bogart.  Meanwhile, Jean Seberg fascinates as Patricia, the self-obsessed American beauty who enjoys Michel’s attention until things get too serious. Michel and Patricia, never sans sunglasses, share the screen for almost the entire last two-thirds of the film.  As a couple, they make for a great representation of youth culture in its time and also a clever portrait of the timeless and tragic problems between the sexes.

What I Didn’t Like

Personally, I enjoyed it, but this film does have a meager plot that progresses at a seemingly improvised pace.  Director Godard characteristically makes frequent cuts in unconventional places.  The actors improvise much of their dialogue and their characters spend a great deal of time talking about things not obviously connected to the film’s plot.  These are not filmmaking choices that will endear “Breathless” to those who approach it with expectations rooted in films from the Hollywood assembly lines.  Then again, those who approach it with an open mind coupled with a love for Hollywood motion pictures, might find the movie an enjoyably fresh, even five decades after its initial release.

Most Memorable Scene

Ironically, it’s the scene in which the least amount of physical action or plot development takes place.  A large part of the middle section of “Breathless” takes place in Patricia’s apartment, to which she arrives to find the uninvited Michel in her bed.  The pair, a brief sexual fling in their fairly recent past, then set about talking to one another in a conversation that goes absolutely nowhere.  As Michel ruminates on his half-assed philosophies about life and tries to convince Patricia to take her clothes off, Patricia has a great time ignoring, rejecting, and insulting him.  Despite their pseudo-romantic past, the pair clearly don’t know a thing about each other and don’t care to do so.  Each is obsessed with his or her own image of themselves, and obviously care nothing for each other.  Yet both of them are completely oblivious to this problem and the whole conversation just collapses into a cold, decidedly unromantic failure.  Again, it’s Godard’s defiance of the Hollywood romance conventions that really mark the scene as unique and (grotesquely) beautiful.

My Rating: 4 out of 5