Breathless

À bout de souffle; art-film / drama / crime, France, 1960; D: Jean-Luc Godard, S: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri-Jacques Huet

Paris. Michel is a small time crook who is having a hard time getting through life. After stealing a car, a policeman stops him for speeding. In panic, Michel shoots the cop and runs away. His only friend is Patricia, an American girl he is in love with, but she is rather cold towards him. Still, she is hiding him from the police in her apartment. Michel is also a big fan of Bogart, often impersonating him. In his getaway, he steals another car, but Patricia reports him to the police. He gets shot and killed. In his dying words, Michel says to Patricia; "You're disgusting". She just simply asks; "What does "Disgusting" mean?"

Some viewers always ask themselves; "From where do some famous and often used stylish ideas originate from"? For instance, the one in which the main hero is looking directly into the camera and "talking" with the viewer, that was seen in hundreds of shows and films like "Kuffs", "Annie Hall", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and others. It originates right from the art drama "Breathless", the feature length debut and the commercially most successful film from the unusual director Jean-Luc Godard who made a star out of Jean-Paul Belmondo: somewhere near the exposition, Michel, the main protagonist, is driving a car and breaking the fourth wall by looking directly into the camera and asking some questions. Not only that, the hand-held camera and strange-abrupt jump cuts in the same scene were also used here for the first time and caused a little sensation, although they are not that fascinating by today's standards. 

Godard helped change the cinema by breaking so many rules and doing whatever he feels like, even if it "doesn't advance the plot". There is a 23-minute (!) long sequence in the middle of the film, where the couple is in the apartment and just talking, which breaks all the rules of filmmaking since it consumes almost a quarter of the film's running time and "stops the film" just for them to chat. This influenced several American filmmakers in the 90s who were prone to long moments of characters just talking, like Q. Tarantino or K. Smith. In that sequence, they talk about everything, even up to trivial or boring stuff, but they have charm, like when Patricia says: "I'll stare at you until you stop staring at me". In another, he is jokingly putting his hands on her neck, saying; "I'm going to count to eight. If you don't smile until then, I'm going to strangle you". One iconic moment has Patricia posing a question to Jean-Pierre Melville's character, a novelist: "What is your greatest ambition in life?" - "To become immortal, and then die". This very good film is still a little bit overrated and 'rough', because it has no intensity, but thanks to the realistic script from François Truffaut the story is much more balanced and grounded from Godard's later 'autistic' films with overpronounced artificiality. Godard's first film is an interesting homage to Paris, romance, original anti-Hollywood filmmaking and free spirit, attached with subtle Marxist messages, but, ironically, despite being very hip during its time, it does not feel that fresh anymore: Godard was never able to tell a story from start to finish, nor to create real characters, just artificial movie figures. As a whole, the movie seems more like essential vegetables: you have to eat them for a healthy diet, but don't quite enjoy them.

Grade:+++