Breathless (1960).

Review #1403: Breathless.

Cast: 
Jean-Paul Belmondo (Michel Poiccard), Jean Seberg (Patricia Franchini), Daniel Boulanger (Police Inspector Vital), Henri-Jacques Huet (Antonio Berruti), Roger Hanin (Carl Zumbach), Van Doude (Van Doude), Liliane Dreyfus (Lilane), Michel Fabre (The other inspector), and Jean-Pierre Melville (Parvulesco) Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

Review: 
"The cinema is not a craft. It is an art. It does not mean teamwork. One is always alone on the set as before the blank page. And to be alone...means to ask questions. And to make films means to answer them. Nothing could be more classically romantic.”

The 1960s were a new wave of revolution for cinema around the world, a decade that would see the end of the studio system and loosening of censorship. When it comes to world cinema, the French New Wave found itself as a key influence for its experimentation when it came to editing, visual style and narrative that challenged the conventional methods of the present with admiration for directors like Howard Hawks or John Ford when it came to their vision on making a film. Numerous people of this wave had been part of Andre Bazin's film magazine Cahiers du Cinema in the late 1950s, such as François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, and Jean-Luc Godard. He was born in France but grew up in both there and Switzerland, and he described his childhood as a "kind of paradise", where he spent a good deal of his time with sports and avid reading. Although he had intended to study engineering, he became interested in the film clubs that encompassed Paris (along with interest in painting). It was his interest in film that led to meeting people like Truffaut and Rivette at the Cinematheque Francais, where spending a whole day with films was like a way to escape from one's life for a bit. It eventually led to them writing film criticism, with one notable Godard article being a defense of the "shot-reverse shot", which Bazin found obsolete. Like Truffaut, he also made a few short films of his own, and it was he who would contribute to Godard getting to direct his first film, with inspiration being found in an article about Michel Portail, who stole a car to visit his sick mother and then killed a motorcycle cop while being turned over to the cops by his American journalist girlfriend. Godard found himself interested in doing this as a feature (after meeting producer Georges de Beauregard while working in 20th Century Fox's Paris office), and the success of Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) helped get a bit of funding together for the film. Although Truffaut had written a script for the film, Godard dispensed with it through writing the dialogue on a day-by-day basis (describing the subject as roughly about "a boy who thinks of death and of a girl who doesn't") while filming with no sound and a hand-held camera to go along with a wheelchair to roll around in to do shots. The resulting film was a hit for audiences and the French New Wave, and Godard has gone on to make several experimental films on his own terms for over five decades, making various works such as Alphaville (1965) and Histoire(s) du cinema (1988-1998).

One can certainly look at Breathless (À bout de soufflé) as one of energy in its methods of madness to make something out of guerilla-style filmmaking that yearns to challenge its viewer in its daring independence, an offbeat and fairly poetic film (complete with a dedication to prominent b-movie studio Monogram Pictures). Oddly enough, Godard would later say that the film's success was a mistake, stating before his film, "there used to be just one way. There was one way you could do things. There were people who protected it like a copyright, a secret cult only for the initiated. That’s why I don’t regret making Breathless and blowing that all apart.” I can certainly respect the intent of Godard when it comes to wanting to make something bold and different from the usual expectations with confident detachment, a drama with noir aspects (including a love of Humphrey Bogart from its main character that sure tries to act like him in a gangster film) and jagged editing done to trim the film (which lasts 87 minutes) that stick out in the viewer's eyes with amazement (or puzzlement, depending on one's tastes), where the rule-book is thrown out in order to make something new and vital, for better or worse, which can test the patience of those craving discipline in a film's foundation (or perhaps were looking for the 1983 American remake). It is an imperfect film, but it has a key place in world cinema that can't be denied for the devoted film-lover, particularly since this is from someone who clearly has a love for them that desires to make one of his own striking vision to divert from the traditions that banded the past while evoking ones from that same era to respect and reference.

Belmondo and Seberg play off each other with casualness, the former being a staggering caricature of impulse and crudeness that goes with the latter's hypnotic allure and driven spirit to make a fascinating duo to ruminate about passion in its modern age, where style permeates because of its director regardless of its budgetary limitations, where a scene can switch from French to English and then back again and be quite diverting. The climax proves to be a swift and effective way to cap off an intriguing film, no doubt helped by the lasting words to end it (which can prove interesting in translation for English viewers with the word of "dégueulasse"). It still packs a power of curiosity after six decades because of its execution of style and bold attitude of honoring and defying the things of cinema to make a piece uniquely fitting to start a career of directing for someone like Godard that one can find plenty to look into today.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.