Release Year: 1960
Country: France
Starring: ean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri-Jacques Huet, Van Doude, Claude Mansard, Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Balducci, Roger Hanin, Jean-Louis Richard.
Writer: Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Cinematographer: Raoul Coutard
Music: Martial Solal
Producer: Georges de Beauregard
Original Title: A bout de souffle
Availability: Buy it from Amazon

It's "one of those films," but even more so than Blow Up. You can escape film school without seeing Antonioni's anti-thriller masterpiece, but few and far between are the professors who won't sit you down and make you watch and over-analyze the film that made Jean-Luc Godard's career and stands out, even today as the defining film of the French new wave and, in a way, of the entirety of French cinema - or perhaps more directly, of the entire host of clichés commonly commented on when people lampoon French cinema. I mean, this is a Godard film based on a Truffaut plot. There wouldn't be two more famous French directors until Jean-Pierre Jeunet and, umm, well that Luc Besson guy, who actually has more in common with Godard than might at first be apparent.

I don't really have enough time here to go into a history of the French New Wave, and to be perfectly honest, I hardly have the knowledge to do so. My exposure to the movement is still limited to those rare moments I was paying attention back in college. Like anyone who took film classes in college, I had to sit through a few. At the time, I think I was too young and wild and full of crazy ideas. I thought the films were talky and pretentious and got by primarily on the reputations they made by getting a few outspoken critics to hail them as groundbreaking masterpieces. Now, as an older man who has tired of the razzle-dazzle and bright lights, I can go back and reevaluate a film like Breathless from a more relaxed and rational point of view.

One of the defining characteristics of the French New Wave, or at least those pieces of it to which I've currently exposed myself, seems to be a love-hate relationship with American cinema and culture. That could sum of France itself, but really, you get to the point in your life when jokes about the French just aren't that funny anymore. Well, maybe one or two of them are, but given the savaging France has taken for having the nerve to stand up and express opinions contrary to Bush's America, I tend to have a little more respect for them these days than I did back when I was fighting the Gerries in the Argone Forest back in 14-18 War. Besides, if nothing else the French have given us fine wine, some good chicken dishes, French women, French kissing (or is that Freedom kissing now), and French Lick, Indiana, which gave us Larry Bird. Besides, like I said a couple days ago, although we saved the French in both World Wars, they saved us during the American Revolution, so if it hadn't been for America, the French would be speaking German; and if it wasn't for France, us Americans would be speaking English. Yeah, I like that joke so much I've now trotted it out in two separate reviews. I thought for a while I actually made it up, but now I'm pretty sure I heard it somewhere else, which makes me using it twice even lamer.

So where was I? Ah yes, much of the French New Wave seems to have been built upon filtering American pulp culture through the lens of French and European intellectualism (or pseudo-intellectualism, if you are cranky about such things) as much as it is rejecting the classical aspects of a well-polished, well-made film in favor of experimental cinema-verite style, clever editing, and almost documentary-style proximity to the subjects of the film, often with handheld cameras. It all begins here in Godard's directorial debut, and many claim that all modern filmmaking begins with this movie, meaning you can look at Breathless in one of two ways: you can look at it as a film, or you can look at it as a revolution. Well, yeah, you can look at it any other number of ways, or combine those two, but they are the aspects of the film with which I'll be poking around. As a revolution, there's not much denying Breathless' impact on filmmaking. Everything changed the day people saw Breathless. Technique changed, and more importantly perhaps, content changed. It is the movie that opened the way for more radical political films. It pioneered a style of filmmaking, writing, and acting and inspired countless stylistic offshoots that took the manifesto and ran with it in wildly diverse directions. It challenged pretty much everything anyone thought they knew about how a film could be executed. In this sense, it doesn't matter how the pieces are put together in Breathless itself; it only matters what Breathless did to other films.

As is befitting for such an anti-establishment sort of movement, many of the innovations in the film were not the product of a conscious philosophy but were, in fact, simply side effects of limitations. Handheld shots were used because they could not afford to lie down tracks for proper dolly shots. The jump edits which came to define the film were a product of the film being overlong by half an hour. Rather than cutting whole scenes, Godard decided to trim bits and pieces from within each scene.

Watching a manifesto isn't usually much fun, though, and since this is a film we should be interested in whether or not it is an entertaining film, which means, was I personally entertained? I could write about whether or not you were entertained, but you know, we get onto some shaky ground there and to be frank, I lied about pretty much all the psyonics and mind reading powers I had in D&D. So all I can say is that, as a film, Breathless entertains me, but as important as I recognize it to be in the grand scheme of things, it's more of a call to arms than a movie I would sit down and watch for enjoyment.

Godard takes the basic tenants of a classic American film noir set-up and goes batty with them. Jean-Paul Belmondo, who would skyrocket to French icon status with this film, stars as Michel, a small-time Paris nobody who idolizes Bogart and the other tough guys of American gangster cinema. He practices tough guy facial expressions in the mirror, always wears a fedora, and smokes more cigarettes in a single film than any other character in cinematic history, probably even in that dippy pander-to-unhip-hipsters dump of a film 200 Cigarettes. But try as he might, he still looks like a kid playing dress-up, and no amount of gangster posturing can cover the fact that he's basically a confused, scared loner.

The hypnotically beautiful Jean Seaberg stars as Michel's opposite, an American girl trying her best to be more French. "Gamine" would not be used again so often to describe an actress until Audrey Tautou's turn in Amelie. She's utterly astounding to look at, and her appearance here, cute beyond belief and sporting the pixie haircut, would become iconic during the decade. Her character, Patricia, is a more mystifying figure. Michel we can understand and see through. But Patricia is more difficult to decode. The two young wanderers meet one another after Michel kills a police officer during a botched car theft and must go on the run. The two spend time making love, seeing movies, chit chatting, and smoking a whole lot of cigarettes before Patricia basically begins to wonder if she loves him enough not to turn him in.

The film is less about the plot than Godard's approach to filmmaking, but even so, the film remains breezy, witty, and enjoyable even as it delves into the depths of pretension. This is thanks in part to lead actor Belmondo, who is comic in his tough guy appearance. Belmondo had been pummeled into a curious state thanks to a boxing career, and his utter lack of classic leading man good looks (itself an homage to Humphrey Bogart) allows him to carry himself with a humorous air. While Patricia remains inscrutable, Michel is just sort a hopeless loser you can't help but warm to even when he's being a bastard. He would have gotten along well with Alfie. Both Michel and Patricia, however, are characters running in sharp contrast to what people expected of movie leads at the time. They are rebellious, adrift, and precursors to the sort of violently anti-authority figures that would come in their wake.

But I won't let reputation alone put twinkling stars in my eyes. I fully admit that I'm not just a film geek, but also a film history and technique geek, and my interest in such things obviously colors my enjoyment of Breathless. If you don't share such a passion, then this movie still has the potential to offer you something to enjoy, though it's more likely you'll just find the whole affair on the irritating side of irritating. Although I have a healthy appreciation for the film, I wouldn't pretend not to understand how someone, even someone intelligent and well versed in film, could find the whole thing a ponderous, pompous mess. I still feel that anyone interested in film should see it if for no other reason than to flesh out your education and see when so much of what has been taken to outrageous extremes these days (jump cuts, unexpected editing, shaky hand-held cameras) and become annoyingly overused convention was still fresh and bold, not to mention much better done.

Plenty of movies have become events, but I find it easy to separate most of them from their sensation. Not so with Breathless, since what caused the sensation remains challenging even today. That leaves me with the feeling that Breathless isn't so much to be watched and enjoyed as it is to be watched and studied -- though I do rather enjoy it. Truth be told, I could just sit and stare at Jean Seaberg for ninety minutes and be happy. That this is one of the most influential films of all time is not a debatable point. It's a fact. Now, whether or not those innovations were put to good use in making a film you can enjoy - that's up for you to decide for yourself. Me? Yeah, I dig it, but that's the kind of guy I am. I think noir fans might get a kick out of it as well since it plays with the genre conventions so much while still remaining more or less faithful to the formula. And even if you're just amused by philosophical mind games, you can sit and think about how the French New Wave was inspired by films of the classic Hollywood era and in turn inspired the ground-breaking American films of the 1970s, which were determined to destroy the concept of the classic Hollywood film.

Whether you love it, hate it, or think it sounds like you would probably hate it, it's a film you really should get around to seeing sooner or later. After all, everything was different from there on out.

Labels: Country: France, Director: Jean-luc Godard, Film Noir, Netflix Diary, Year: 1960