Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Fresh and Exciting

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"Breathless"Jean-Luc Godard Debut film about a car thief on the run from the authorities after he murders a cop. He makes a stop in Paris to pick up an American girl whom he fell in love with for the planned getaway to Italy. But the detectives are too smart for the psychotic dreamer, and the young American girl has bigger plans ..Great premise , off execution . Camerawork was great, long tracking shots leading the character's. Sexy images of women .. Jean-Pierre Melville makes a guest appearance as an erotic adult author .7/10

Breathless seems to have lost some of its critical standing recently, but it is still a really good film. It isn't really a film about anything much aside from a criminal who killed a policeman trying to persuade a student to run away with him, so in terms of story it might not rivet certain viewers. However, this is the work of an auteur at the very top of his game. Jean-Luc Goddard's direction is brilliant and he fills the film completely with a sheer, overwhelming energy that shatters cinematic conventions. The main character is unlikable but always compelling and Breathless, both in aesthetic and narrative terms, is a glorious example of rebellion and breaking free. It's a seriously cool movie and a genuinely hypnotic experience. Unfortunately, it's not quite a 5 star movie. The film sags in the middle during a drawn-out sequence in a hotel room with the 2 main characters talking endlessly about whether or not they're going to have sex, but after that the film picks up again. It is admittedly more an important film than a great one, but it is still a really good film and a highly interesting piece of film history. 8/10

Jean-Luc Godard's audacious debut is one of the films that started the French New Wave, and it has most of the directors from the New Wave associated with it - with the script written by François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette appearing in a cameo as the dead man on the street. Even director Jean-Pierre Melville, whose reporting style and use of real locations had a big influence on the New Wave, appears in a short scene where he's an author being interviewed by Patricia and other reporters.Though not his best, Godard's 'Breathless' is his most famous and discussed film. Even after 50 years, it hasn't lost its vitality; it's interpreted in so many different ways. We all know that most of these New Wave directors (formerly critics at 'Cahiers du Cinema') wanted to shift away from the style and rules of Classic Hollywood, which most of the mainstream French films had adapted over the years. Godard tries to break these conventions and tries experimenting with various aspects of the film. Firstly, he casts Jean-Paul Belmondo, with his punched nose and unconventional looks (though quite charming), and Jean Seberg in a boy-cut tomboyish role, introducing her wearing a T-shirt and selling newspapers on the street (an intriguing and memorable intro). With regard to Patricia's character, though intended or not, the film did have quite a feminist undertone (much different from the female characters portrayed at the time). Other than this, the film mainly comprises of random conversations and a meandering plot. All these elements went on to reinvent Modern Cinema. Godard believed that most of the mainstream films tried to seduce people with their fictional reality, tried to entertain them and make them forget the worries of their daily life; he said that's how capitalist systems kept their people happy and content. He wanted to defy establishment and authority, both in terms of film and politics; though this film is not as Marxist as his later films, it's certainly quite anarchist in nature and his contempt for capitalism is clearly visible. Just like Patricia wonders, "I don't know if I'm unhappy because I'm not free, or if I'm not free because I'm unhappy." With random jump-cuts in a single scene or characters looking/talking to the camera, Godard constantly reminds the viewer that they're watching a work of fiction, thus making us watch the film in a different light, evoking a higher level of consciousness and compelling us to interpret the film's intended meaning. He wanted to stress that none of it was real, and that the director has complete control of what's being shown on screen. The film circles-in twice (in the style of film noir), once pointing to almost nothing conspicuous (to draw the attention outside of the film), and the next time when Godard himself appears in a cameo as the informer, thus ingeniously highlighting the fact that it's Godard (the director) who's controlling the plot from within and outside of the film. Even when Michel shoots the policeman, the scene is shown in such a haphazard and unusual way; the scene is as detached from the event as the protagonist, highlighting the moral jumps he takes in the situation. Though the New Wave directors were tired of the rigid style of Classic Hollywood, they were big admirers of Film Noir. Even in this film, Godard pays homage to it in various ways, whether it's the way Michel's admires and imitates Humphrey Bogart or the random circle-ins. Michel informs his identity with the tough-guy persona of Bogart's films, and the tragedy is that even when he decides/tries to escape such a life and identity, he's still pushed along the tragic fate of characters in such crime thrillers; he's stuck within it, there's no escape. And if we analyse both our characters, we realize they have none of the usual characteristics of a film hero or anti-hero; they are quite self-obsessed, amoral, aimless, so absorbed in the world of art (Michel in cinema, Patricia in literature), yet so oblivious to the world around them. Godard tries to highlight the absurdity of life without a political, philosophical or moral commitment. The final scene is as alluring and mysterious as the rest of the film. Whether it's the statement that's said or the gesture of tracing the lips - both being carried forward and reinterpreted by different members in its chain of action. Overall, let me state that 'Breathless' isn't a great film by itself; it's not even close to the brilliance and emotional resonance of Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" or Resnais' "Hiroshima Mon Amour", New Wave works which released the previous year. Other than a few captivating scenes and dialogues, most of the film is dull and boring; I wonder how dragging the original two-and-a-half-hour runtime might have been like. But the film is important for two reasons - the way it experimented with the format opened up new possibilities in cinematic storytelling, and it's the kind of film which offers such interesting interpretations and opportunities for discussion with other cinephiles.

Jean-Luc Godard is one of the French New Wave directors who, as critics in the 1950s, had been regular contributors to the influential publication "Cahiers Du Cinema". As a group, they were disenchanted with the output of the French film industry at that time and believed that by putting the director at the centre of the creative process and dispensing with traditional narrative conventions, a far more imaginative style of filmmaking could be achieved. In his first film, Godard sought to achieve this by a variety of means which included, borrowing from some earlier cinematic styles that he admired.In "Breathless" ("A Bout De Soufflé"), a simple film noir plot is presented in a style that owes much to the influence of the Italian Neo-Realists (e.g. filming on location, use of hand-held cameras and improvised dialogue). Additionally, by using unorthodox techniques such as "jump cuts" and getting characters to look directly into the camera and then injecting the action with great pace, the result is a movie that looks vibrant, spontaneous and highly energetic.At the time of its release, few could have imagined the impact that "Breathless" would have on filmmaking in general or the profound influence it would subsequently have on numerous directors such as John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a small-time criminal who after stealing a car in Marseilles and killing a motorcycle cop, makes his way to Paris to collect some money that he's owed and reunite with one of his girlfriends called Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg). Patricia's an American student who has aspirations to become a journalist and earns some money by selling the "New York Herald-Tribune" on the Champs Elysees. Michel wants to escape to Italy as soon as he can collect his money and wants Patricia to go with him but she tells him that she can't leave Paris for financial reasons.Michel spends his time in Paris sharing Patricia's hotel room and the couple talk a great deal about life and love whilst Michel also tries relentlessly to seduce her. Despite the seriousness of his crimes, Michel seems very unconcerned about the situation he's in and if he does feel desperate, certainly hides it well beneath a façade of being super-cool. He's totally amoral and an inveterate thief but is also very preoccupied with trying to emulate the mannerisms of his hero, Humphrey Bogart.Patricia is a cold character who's fascinated by Michel's lifestyle but always remains emotionally detached even when they seem to be at their closest. Things get increasingly complicated for Michel as the police manhunt intensifies but eventually matters are brought to a head by a simple action that's incredibly casual, uncaring and self-serving.French New Wave directors Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jean-Pierre Melville all contributed in different ways to the making of this movie and Alain Resnais' "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959) is just one of a whole collection of other films and filmmakers that are referenced. Amusingly, Michel's alias in the movie is Laszlo Kovacs and he also uses some of Humphrey Bogart's photos outside a cinema that's showing "The Harder They Fall" (1956) to perfect his attempt to look and act as much like Bogey as possible.In retrospect, it's no exaggeration to describe "Breathless" as a masterpiece because its exhilarating combination of originality, freshness and sheer enthusiasm was genuinely revolutionary when it was made and it became an incredibly rich source of inspiration to other filmmakers in the years that followed.