Breathless - Criterion Collection (1961)

Top Classic

What to write? If you know of the director, you surely own this. If not, and you're interested in TOP FILM CLASSICS, buy it... October 3, 2008

Godard's Jazzy Groundbreaker Still Packs a Punch and Gets the Luxuriant Criterion Treatment

At the forefront of the French New Wave along with François Truffaut (The 400 Blows), Alain Resnais (Hiroshima Mon Amour), and Louis Malle (Elevator to the Gallows), Jean-Luc Godard broke all the rules in his 1960 directorial debut with a story borne out of American B-movie conventions but revitalized by his free-form narrative, hand-held camerawork (by Raoul Coutard) and jazz-infused editing style. On the surface, it seems like a standard young couple-on-the-run adventure, but Godard upends the predictability of the situation with a fresh, documentary-style perspective that emphasizes youthful impulses over morality lessons. Some of its fresh, brazen novelty has worn off over the years, but there is no denying its propulsive energy.

The plot is deceptively simple. Michel Poiccard is a young, small-time criminal with a Bogart fixation, living for the moment and taking what he needs with no consideration for the possible consequences. His one obsession is Patricia Franchini, a pixyish New Yorker who lives in Paris and works part-time for the New York Herald Tribune. Michel steals a car in Marseilles and drives to Paris to see her again. On the way, however, he shoots a motorcycle cop with a gun found in the glove compartment of the stolen car. As the police close in on Michel, he holes up in Patricia's apartment and tries to convince her to run away with him to Rome. Godard wrote the script based on a story by Truffaut, and the plot emphasis is placed squarely on the dynamic between Michel and Patricia, especially in a lengthy dialogue scene in her apartment. The thriller aspects seem secondary until the last half-hour and the memorably bitter ending.

In his breakthrough role, Jean-Paul Belmondo captures Michel's surly, amoral nature with a certain magnetic quality that announces his arrival. As the fashionably enigmatic Patricia, Jean Seberg was just 21 but had already been burned by Hollywood thanks to her mechanical performances in two Otto Preminger films, Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse. She still strikes me a blank slate here, but it seems to work for the story because the viewer is left wondering what motivates her devotion to him and her final act of absolution. The two-disc 2007 Criterion Collection DVD set is as impressive as expected for the film's aficionados. Beyond a fairly pristine print of the movie, Disc One includes the original French trailer and 27-minutes worth of vintage interviews with Godard, Belmondo, Seberg, and director Jean-Pierre Melville (who has a memorable cameo as a pretentious author. Surprisingly, there is no commentary track from a film scholar, the usual supplement for special Criterion releases.

Disc Two has the lion's share of the extras. There are recent interviews with Coutard and assistant director Pierre Rissient, as well as a ten-minute interview with documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and his brief experience working with Godard. Seberg gets special attention in an eighteen-minute film essay that covers her tragic life and career, and another essay, "Breathless as Criticism" has Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum explaining the significance of the film for a new generation. There is a 78-minute documentary from 1993, "Chambre 12, Hotel de Suede" that traces the original film locales. Interviews with Belmondo, Coutard, and technical adviser Claude Chabrol are also included. Finally, there is a twelve-minute comedy short from 1959, "Charlotte et son Jules" co-starring Godard and Belmondo. A comprehensive eighty-page booklet accompanies the set. September 12, 2008

One of the most overrated films ever

The fact that an artist writes boringly to convey boredom, or childishly to convey puerility, has no effect on the resultant work not being boring nor puerile. Self-awareness of a flaw does not alleviate the flaw. For this to not be true intent in art would have to matter, meaning that all art would necessarily have to be accompanied by a detailed explanation of itself and its conception by the artists, which would therefore render the idea of the art as its own best explanation worthless. Naturally, this would rent the very essence of the artwork.
Yet, in recent decades there has been the reflexive notion, usually tossed about by bad artists, that intent is almost all in art, or even that it supersedes actual accomplishment. This results in defenses of bad works of art that inevitably rely on defending the art's intent, not its success in following through on that intent. This has been championed by the `first thought, best thought' Beatniks of the 1950s, modern Postmodernist thought, and in the 1960s New Wave of French cinema. One of the leading lights of that `movement' was Jean-Luc Godard, whose first film, Breathless (A Bout de Souffle [literally, The End Of Breath]- 1960), made him a directing superstar. While one cannot dispute the historic import of such a film, historic import has never been equivalent to artistic excellence, and Breathless is a horribly dated film. Yet, even were it not so dated, it would still be a bad film because it is so self-conscious, so poorly written, and so poorly acted, that I thought I was watching a Roger Corman cheapo horror film. Let me state, however, that there is more `art' in your typical Corman piece from that era, say The Last Woman On Earth, because its commentary on the state of filmmaking and art was more subtle, if often unintentional. Godard, by contrast, is so garishly dying to show his audience how hip and intellectual he is that he somehow forgot to put any of that, nor substance, into his film.
He attempts to capture `reality' on film without realizing that anything filmed becomes unreal, or irreal, as opposed to surreal. Thus, the art of film, or any art, can NEVER be real, and to convey reality most aptly, it needs to be most affected. Godard, by shooting his film with handheld camera, as Parisians gawk at the filming in process, thus makes the most artificial of films, even as he tries to show the most boring aspects of life, glossing over crimes and `deep' moments that other films contain, to show the dull times. He thus gets the two worst aspects of film- the `artificiality' of cinema verité and the reality of dull life, rather than the two best: the `reality' of film as artifice and the artifice of poetically chosen reality.
What little story the tale has starts abruptly. It is an odd start, but not unlike many bad 1950s kids' television shows, nor contemporaneous B horror films like Carnival Of Souls. A hood named Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) steals a car in Marseilles and drives to Paris. On his way there, he is stopped for speeding and shoots a policeman. This goes by so quickly and without explanation that the viewer cannot empathize with him. Once in Paris, he needs to get money from a friend and flirts with an American female student named Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) he has had an affair with. They wax in and out of fancy with one another, and on it goes.... Across the pond, in America, at the time Breathless was being filmed, John Cassavetes was also making his feature film debut as a director, with Shadows, and although there is an amateurish quality to some aspects of that film, and it was not nearly praised as highly as Breathless, it was much less amateurish than this film, and holds up far better today, as a `realist' piece of filmmaking. Breathless, by contrast, can only be defended as a historical curio, not artistically on its own merits, which is exactly what virtually all online essays that defend it do. Cassavetes' first film, by contrast, stands alone, and his usage of overlapping and realistic dialogue, not culled nor self-consciously quoted from Hollywood film dialogue, is far better than Godard's, which was stillborn when fellow auteur Francois Truffaut abandoned the screenplay to Godard. Godard captured none of the film noir joie de vivre that he hoped to, while Cassavetes brought American real life dialogue to the screen at the same time. Godard's characters never utter a believable line of dialogue. It is all a put on, for Michel is no more a gangster type than Belmondo- the actor who plays him, is, nor even Humphrey Bogart- the actor Michel imitates throughout the film. This is seen by apologists, however, as the film's style, although this so-called style is really stylelessness, and that is no more artistic than claiming formless Dave Eggersian puerility as a writing style....Later filmmakers went leagues beyond Godard, and actually demanded their innovations serve the film's tale, rather than merely being a piece of self-indulgence a haphazard and wan tale is draped over. With no good execution, no real depth, nor character development, what was intended as satire becomes, instead, awkward and obvious imitation, not witty enough for comedy, and more resembling something like film noir lite.
John Cassavetes was doing similar things in America, but doing them much better, for his filmic improvisations never came across as `improvisations', but `reality'. In short, for all the claims to the contrary, this film, at least, does not reveal a unique innovator in his art form, but an old Romantic masquing as a hipster, and wildly cobbling together a Frankensteinian mess. In America we call that person a poseur. In France they apparently call them geniuses....just like, um, Jerry Lewis.
September 8, 2008

One of Godard's first and best films

This is one of the best (and first) movies made by Godard. It is historic in it's introduction of jump cuts and as an important contribution to the french New Wave, and so on. And it's very fun to watch. This Criterion edition contains a good transfer of the film plus tons of extras. Well worth buying. June 23, 2008

"When the French say a second, they mean five minutes."

Breathless is a great example of French New Wave, a film with innovative camerawork and editing. It does not resemble the majority of films made previous to it which is why it is interesting. Jean Luc Godard was one of several filmmakers who felt that movies were getting stale, so he attempted to rejuvinate the medium.

Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) kills a cop after stealing a car. He overreacted but now needs to play it cool to avoid detection. He is a wanted man, but he steals cars left and right and persues a beautiful American girl (Jean Seberg) instead of fleeing the country. She is ambivalent about him, but the two spend a lot of time together. Their conversations are the most enjoyable parts of the movie, especially the one in her apartment.

A simple movie that sometimes feels like sneaking into a stranger's conversation, Breathless is highly enjoyable. It was made on a modest budget, but it comes off as being slick and interesting.

This DVD edition has an extra disk just brimming over with special features. For die hard fans, this is essential. May 15, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...