Godard on the set with cameraman Raoul Coutard
Godard on the set with actress Jean Seberg
Godard on the set with his cameraman and his actors
Godard and Coutard on the set with actor Jean-Paul Belmondo
Godard on the set with Director Claude Chabrol
BREATHLESS (À Bout de Souffle) B+
France (89 mi) 1959
d: Jean-Luc Godard
Innovative, to be sure, as it’s a breezy tribute to Bogart
and American films, particularly film noir, often recreating scenes on the fly blatantly
meant to mirror the original source, viewed as an homage to Godard’s cinematic
favorites, a reminder that filmmaking can be a joyous undertaking (in contrast
to the wretchedly dry obscurantism that passes for Godard films of today), yet what’s
particularly striking is the existential point of view, as there’s really no connection
to the past or future, so for the duration of the film all that exists is
today, becoming the youthful inspiration for the French New Wave movement. With a plotline that could be written on a
discarded scrap of an envelope, this story was allegedly inspired by an article
viewed in the newspaper about a young outlaw who killed a policeman, then hides
out with his girlfriend until she eventually betrays him. Clearly Godard’s heroes reject contemporary
society, a feeling the director strongly identifies with, coinciding with a
general feeling in the early 60’s that the younger generation was suffocating
under the stifling restrictions of an overly repressed 50’s conservatism,
ushering in a new era of social consciousness.
At the time, there was no agenda to speak of, no platform to support,
just a general feeling that a tidal wave of change was coming. As a point of comparison, is this film really
as radical as what Cassavetes was doing in Shadows
(1959), released 6 months earlier, offering a more pronounced sense of
spontaneity, jazz, identity, race, and a newly developing sense of social awareness? What’s different was there was no movement
following Cassavetes, who was way ahead of his time, as the independent films
in America wouldn’t catch on until the late 60’s and early 70’s, while the
French New Wave style erupted like a house on fire following the release of
this film, revitalizing the French film industry, with the iconic Parisian film
journal Cahiers du Cinéma suggesting in
1962 that the film spawned 120 new first-time French directors between the
years 1958 and 1964 according to A
History of the French New Wave Cinema by Richard Neupert (UW Press - : A
History of the French New Wave Cinema, Richard ...), which is why Godard
gets all the recognition for introducing something revolutionary to cinema. To that end, what this film provides is a
feeling of spontaneity, improvisation, living in the moment, offering a spirit
of liberation, even if that was only a fleeting moment. Freedom in this film is always viewed as personal
freedom, refusing to allow restrictions that slow you down, ignoring road
signs, for instance, speeding ahead, always moving forward (“Don't use the
brakes. Cars are made to go, not to
stop!”), personified by kinetic energy, perhaps best expressed by a traveling
shot, living by a mantra of doing what you want when you want, without anyone
telling you different, living life like there’s no tomorrow, where “being
afraid is the worst sin there is.” What
this film represents is a rebellious attitude, an expression of its own virile,
hyper-masculine style, like Brando in THE WILD ONE (1953), with Jean-Paul
Belmondo in the defining performance of his career as Michel playing a petty
thief, a street hustler and a con artist, a guy that romances girls, steals
cars, robs from unsuspecting suspects at will, be it strangers or pilfering
through the purses of his girlfriends, never once expressing an ounce of
remorse. Drifting through life at an
accelerated pace, what better means of expression is there to utilize than a
B-movie format, particularly the black and white film noir style, with all the
dark tones and its fatalistic implications, largely defined by action, where
the leading figure has seen it all, absolutely nothing phases him, as he has
developed survival instincts, a way to cheat death, like playing a game of
Russian roulette, until one fateful day when the game is over.
Perhaps best described from James Monaco’s The New Wave, 1974 (page 117), The
New Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette:
action vs. contemplation, the gray
city, the ambivalence of women, the ambivalence towards women, lovelessness,
the iconography of words, the power of popular culture, the grotesque
distortions of capitalism, transience (no one has a home), cafes, the endless
talk, the formal mis-en-scène, the syntax of sound vs. image, American culture,
the B-movie, the film noir, the chilling romance with death, the difficulty of
understanding, the commonness of death, the situation of the outsider, the
political act, the importance of the sign, the “significance” (in semiological
terms) of the sign, print vs. film, automania (both of the self and
automobile), auterism, digressions, the sociological treatise, the pun, Angst,
Sartrean nausea.
After a fleeting moment when he’s stopped on a joy ride by a
couple of motorcycle cops for speeding and reckless driving in a stolen car,
Michel speeds ahead in a desperate attempt to lose them, pulling off at a country
roadside detour when the car stalls. One
of the cops drives past, as does the other, but he quickly returns down the
detour heading straight for Michel, who feels he has little choice but to shoot
and kill him, making a run for it afterwards, eventually finding his way back
into Paris. Holing up in the apartment
of a girlfriend afterwards, he blithely steals money from her purse, an act
that is commonplace and routine in his life, before heading out to the Champs-Élysées
to meet a girl selling newspapers on the street, Jean Seberg as Patricia, an American
love interest that he flirts with and seduces, taking a casual romantic
interest in her throughout, whose French language skills are comically
amateurish, but part of that may be due to Godard’s own habit of providing a
script only on the morning of a shoot, not allowing any rehearsal time, trying
to work quickly and economically, literally making the film on the fly, often
without permission to shoot on the streets of Paris (requiring a fully
submitted script that didn’t exist), which certainly add plenty of documentary
authenticity and vibrant character to this film, literally abandoning the idea
of a movie studio and instead implementing a guerilla style of cinéma vérité with
no sound, no lights, and no crew shooting at actual locations spread throughout
Paris, many revealed here, A
bout de souffle: footnotes to the film - The Cine-Tourist and here, In
search of the locations for Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless | BFI. Part of the beauty of the film is the way it
continuously moves around the city of Paris, shot in natural lighting with a
handheld camera by Raoul Coutard, a war photo-journalist who was hired based on
his ability to shoot rapidly, who would go on to work with Godard on fifteen
films, holding his camera still even while moving quickly, resorting to clever
methods to hide and disguise the camera so pedestrians were unaware they were
being photographed. This, in essence,
defined the New Wave philosophy, in direct contrast to studio shoots where
everything is planned out ahead of time, allowing freedom of movement by the
director who planned where he wanted to shoot the scenes, but gave each an
improvisational feel. As for his
infamous jump cuts, this was only implemented after the shooting finished in
the editing room, on a recommendation by fellow director Jean-Pierre Melville, as
the initial edit was too long, offering advice on how to shorten scenes simply
by cutting them abruptly without expository explanations, which also quickens
the pace of the film. The film is
dedicated to Monogram Pictures, makers of cheap American horror and noir movies
of the 40’s, a Hollywood B-movie studio that many of the Cahiers du Cinéma critics admired (churning out Charlie Chan and
Bela Lugosi pictures) and includes the presence of Melville in the film, a
director openly espousing the film noir technique utilized here even as it’s
shot in the middle of summer, where a gloomy noir attitude runs throughout the
picture. When asked his greatest
ambition in life, Melville as a world famous author responds, “To become
immortal…and then die.”
Exuding charisma and emulating Bogart, including the infamous
wipe of his lips with his thumb, also seen wearing a fedora, Belmondo is the
star of the show despite his self-centered narcissism and openly chauvinistic behavior
that shows little regard for the opposite sex, making it all about what he
wants right now, like his voracious appetite for cigarettes, expecting the
girls to simply play along, as if he can easily push them around at will. Essentially about a couple that couldn’t be
more different, Patricia, being an American, invites comparisons to French
girls, as she stubbornly flaunts her independence, even when falling under his
spell, suspicious about where this all may lead, though actually confessing
that she “wants to be like Romeo and Juliet” who “couldn’t do without each
other.” Her middle class innocence comes
with the territory, an American abroad seeking to establish her career as a
journalist, with aspirations to be a writer, though still supported by her
wealthy father so long as she attends classes at the Sorbonne, becoming
something of a fashion statement with her short cropped hair and chic attire, viewed
as a pseudo-intellectual reading Faulkner’s 1939 novel Wild Palms, discussing the book’s final line, “Between grief and
nothing, I will take grief.” Michel
responds otherwise, suggesting “Grief’s stupid, l’d choose nothing. It’s no better, but grief’s a compromise. l want all or nothing.” This existential abyss is at the heart of the
picture, depicting what might be described as “romantic nihilism,” where the
couple is basically borrowing time before the inevitable occurs. To viewers, what’s missing is not what
happens, but how it happens. They spend
an inordinate amount of time onscreen confined to her cramped bedroom making
small talk that amounts to nothing really except his persistent attempts to go
to bed with her, repeatedly calling her a coward when she refuses, while she
flirtatiously poses in front of a mirrors or compares her profile to a Renoir
painting on the wall, mostly shot in close-ups throughout, uttering sweet nothings
like “I don’t know if I’m unhappy because I’m not free, or if I’m not free
because I’m unhappy.” Rejecting his
advances only makes him want her more, like forbidden fruit, where she remains
ambivalent all along about what she really wants, finding it hard to decide
until she finally relents, where this no man’s zone of sexual provocation and
aloof standoffishness is like a moral wasteland, producing a kind of intense
neurotic despair. Interestingly she
plays records during their pillow talk, most of which Michel has no interest
in, exhibiting little interest in highbrow culture, claiming he’s only in the
city to recover money owed to him by a friend, as after that he’s off to Rome,
inviting Patricia to tag along. He
literally makes dozens of phone calls in this film in pursuit of his money,
showing that his real interest lies in sex, cars, money, and cigarettes, though
he’s also seen constantly scouring the newspapers for the latest update on the
police investigation of the murder, eventually posting his picture, also using
a photo ticker device of electric newsreel headlines digitally broadcast on designated
city buildings suggesting police are on the verge of making an imminent arrest.
This kind of running commentary telegraphs
what’s about to happen, preventing any notion of suspense, even as Patricia
seems to be falling for the guy, more accepting of theft as part of this
diversionary lifestyle on the run, suddenly taking an interest in stealing
cars. But this moral hiccup can’t last
long, as she’s a virtuous girl at heart, just taking a momentary detour along
the road.
The French love affair with American culture reflects a
postwar mentality, as the same thing happened in Japan and Germany, emulating
the cultural characteristics of the victors or occupying force, meant to
represent an elusive freedom that apparently exists only in America. Even the cars Belmondo steals are in large
part American cars, luxury Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles, and a sharp looking
Thunderbird convertible, while also appropriating Bogart mannerisms, an actor
known for using his head, chasing the pretty girls, and getting himself out of
precarious positions, and there’s even a scene of crowds gathering along the
Champs-Élysées cheering for Eisenhower and de Gaulle in a spirit of
Franco-American postwar solidarity. But
Godard goes further, making visual and aural references to classical
musicians: Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Mozart,
painters: Renoir, Degas, Picasso, and
Klee, writers: Faulkner, Rilke, Cocteau,
and Shakespeare, cultural landmarks: the
Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame de Paris, and iconic movie
directors like Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray, Budd Boetticher, Robert Aldrich, Otto
Preminger, and Sam Fuller. Following the
success of Truffaut’s The
400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959) which won Best Director at Cannes
in 1959, which brought attention to Cahiers
filmmakers like Rivette and Rohmer, but also Chabrol’s Les
Bonnes Femmes (1960), the film rightly gets credit for spurning an interest
in the French New Wave, becoming a box-office sensation, opening not in arthouse
theaters but in commercial establishments, reputedly earning 50 times more than
the cost of the film, which was something like $48,000 to $90,000, with a
quarter of that paying for Jean Seberg’s salary, yet what seems most
influential about the film is capturing the existential ennui that
characterized the 50’s, perhaps perfectly expressed by Belmondo’s dry
commentary after being betrayed by Patricia who becomes a police informant (only
after an alarmed citizen played by Godard himself in a Hitchcock style cameo points
out the car to police carrying the wanted man whose face is plastered all over
the newspapers), who doesn’t run or get angered at her when she tells him, but
accepts it all as part of the overall dramatic arc of his life leading to its inevitable
conclusion, like it’s all part of the game, “Informers inform, burglars burgle,
murderers murder, lovers love.”
Following in the footsteps of the Italian neorealists and his Cahiers editor André Bazin, Godard struck
a nerve with his preference for re-introducing realism, but in a new format, which
included shooting on the streets, in bars and café’s, or dingy apartments, with
one memorable shot inside what was the Quick Elysées restaurant with windows
from floor to ceiling looking out onto a bustling humanity just outside
literally bursting with life, which frames the albeit smaller story taking
place inside, literally dwarfed by a sea of humanity. Godard’s personal mantra for shooting the
film seemed to be to rely upon the impulses of the moment, where timing is
everything, which is why this film holds such an iconic place in the pantheon
of film history. As for the film itself,
it’s little more than a glorified B-movie, but the influence it’s had on the
movie industry is irrefutable. Riding a wave
of aesthetic freedom, spontaneity, and personal expression, Godard perfectly
captured the instability of the human experience, isolated and cut off from
each other, separated by language and boundaries and political differences, it
was the height of the Cold War, more distrustful than ever of an impending
future that might include nuclear disaster, mirroring society on its own
exasperating terms, with people caught up in the existential angst of the
times.
A footnote on Jean Seberg, who committed suicide in Paris at
the age of 40, hounded relentlessly by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI COINTELPRO program
for being a supporter and fundraiser for the Black Panthers in the 1960’s,
repeatedly breaking into her home, tapping her phones, keeping her under
constant surveillance, and planting false defamatory stories about her in the
press that left her emotionally devastated, so distraught that she claimed it
induced premature labor, losing a child shortly afterwards, an unspeakable
horror from which she never recovered, growing suicidal, dying near the 9-year
anniversary of her child’s death, leaving a suicide apology note written in
French addressed to that child. She is
buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.
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