FILM CHALLENGE: 153) Breathless

153) Breathless

Director: Jean Luc Godard

Year: 1960

Plot Summary: Michel Poiccard, an irresponsible sociopath and small-time thief, steals a car and impulsively murders the motorcycle policeman who pursues him. Now wanted by the authorities, he renews his relationship with Patricia Franchini, a hip American girl studying journalism at the Sorbonne, whom he had met in Nice a few weeks earlier. Before leaving Paris, he plans to collect a debt from an underworld acquaintance and expects her to accompany him on his planned getaway to Italy.

Before the 1960s, French cinema had yet to develop in the way that America had. Whilst Orson Welles had shown how the movies could stand alone as an artistic medium with his incredible drama Citizen Kane in the late 1940s, most of the films coming out of France were still just on-screen plays, ones based on already existing stories or were ideas simply stolen from the Americans. Aside from a few unique talents, very few French filmmakers had really explored the possibilities of the medium and, even then, it was no more than any Western auteur like John Huston or Howard Hughes was doing.

That was until the French New Wave came along.

La Nouvelle Vague intended to smash the traditions of French cinema and prove that movies could be an art form entirely different from anything else. Many of these films, therefore, used radical styles of editing, storytelling and had a unique visual style. One of the most seminal films of this new wave is Jean Luc Godard's classic Breathless.

Flipping the finger at the bourgeois middle class who upheld the boring, traditional French cinema, Godard broke all the rules of what was normally expected in a film with Breathless.This is symbolised in the narrative by the protagonist, Michel, a rebel who fights against the norms of society and yet is perceived to be a hero. Early on he shoots a police officer and, throughout Breathless, he lies, cheats and steals his way to his tragic demise. As a sign says in the films: He 'lives dangerously 'till the end'.

Michel is played be Jean-Paul Belmondo who, equally, embodies the film's attack against the traditional form of cinema. He was one of the very first actors to appear in a film was, firstly, not a trained actor. Instead, Belmondo was a professional boxer. Secondly, he didn't have the common Parisian accent either that was all too frequently heard in French movies.

In terms of its style, furthermore, Breathless was revolutionary. The narrative is simply a series of existential and Gaelic exchanges, for example, rather than having a traditional three-act story. Also, Godard breaks both the 180 and 30 degree rules with his camerawork creating dizzying scenes and disorientated jump cuts, an effect that was completely unheard of until this film. Hell, it even includes one scene in which Michel engages with the audience.

But even what you don't see on screen in Breathless was completely unique as Godard, bound by the financial state of France following the war, decided to take his camera into the streets and film his story in a low-budget fashion. There are scenes filmed as the camera is pushed along in a shopping trolley and a terrific photograph can be found in the blu-ray release showing the cinematographer hanging off the side of a building to achieve a shot.

Love it or hate it, there's no way of telling what modern cinema would be like if it wasn't for both Jean Luc Godard and his one and only masterpiece Breathless. A pivotal, revolutionary work of cinema that most modern films owe everything to.

5/5

By Daniel Sarath with 1 comment