Breathless
|
List Price: Our Price: $19.49 You Save: $0.46 (2%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $10.95 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Breathless
Movie Review: It Cast Its Light Forward
Summary: 5 Stars
"A Bout de Souffler," ("Breathless")1960, a French crime drama/romance/thriller was the first of the "Nouvelle Vogue"("New Wave") films - made by a school of filmmakers associated with the noted French cinema enthusiasts' magazine "Cahiers du Cinema--" principally Jean Luc Godard, and Francois Truffaut, among others. Truffaut wrote the script; Godard directed; it was his first film. It starred the "jolie-laid," (beautiful-ugly) Jean-Paul Belmondo, making his film debut as Michel Poiccard/Laszlo Kovacs, a petty thief-cop killer. And the stunningly beautiful Jean Seberg, then 21, as Patricia Franchini, a seemingly aimless American girl taking classes at Paris's famed university, the Sorbonne, selling The New York Herald Tribune International Edition along the City's equally famed shopping street, the Champs Elysee. It introduced techniques that were to become commonplace: hand-held cameras, jump cuts, a cool jazz soundtrack, as it told its story, filmed on the streets of Paris for less than $50,000: even then a bargain basement price.
In plot, actually, it could be a typical B crime thriller of the 1930's or 40's; Poiccard kills the cop in the first few minutes of the film -we're never quite sure why; thereafter, he just wants to raise enough money to flee to Italy with Patricia; who doesn't wish to go, and will eventually take steps to assert her independence. Poiccard is much more self-aware than an earlier generation of filmic criminals were; he's a great admirer of Humphrey Bogart; constantly trying on the mannerisms of that iconic actor. It's not easy to sympathize with him; yet we eventually do, to some extent.
"Breathless" is widely considered a great, groundbreaking film, and so it is. But my relationship with it is a little different than most people: I first saw it upon its initial release, as a college freshman. Someone once remarked that great books we read when we are young serve as lighthouses: casting their light forward on where we will eventually go. Well, for me, actually, it was movies rather than books, that illuminated the way forward, and "Breathless" was surely a lighthouse for me. Was it the coolness of the characters? Their ironic, disaffected viewpoints? For sure, the two leads are portrayed as shallow and vain, yet the movie spoke to something in the young woman I was; wish I could put my finger on it. So "Breathless" is no longer technically groundbreaking, of course, but hopefully it can still serve as a lighthouse for those coming upon it for the first time.
Movie Review: "It's silly, but I love you. I wanted to see you, to see if I'd want to see you.",
Summary: 5 Stars
I finally did it. I finished watching "À bout de souffle" aka "Breathless". I kept putting it off because I usually have problem when everybody tells me that such and such film is the epitome of its era or it breaks all the rules, starts the revolution, and reinvents the cinema. Well, "À bout de souffle" does not put you under the pressure, it takes you for a ride, and you follow for 90 minutes its incredibly young characters, common crook (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his American free-spirited girlfriend (Jean Seberg) on their journey on the streets of 1960-th Paris along with Raoul Coutard's legendary camera. I am not going to tell here how great the camera work was, how fantastic the music score and the views of Paris were - the fans of the film know that already. They also know about the beginning of French New Wave, and how it influenced the future cinema. I just want to say that the movie was made over forty years ago - the smoking was cool back then, and Belmondo made smoking look very sexy. Belmondo fascinates me in this film. I've seen him in a lot of later movies - he's always been good (I recommend Le Magnifique, 1973 and Le Professionnel,1981 ) - but in À bout de souffle he is not just good - he is embodiment of cool, his face changes its expression every moment, you can not take your eyes off him. Is it me or he does remind the very young Mick Jagger - not commonly handsome but irresistible and sexy? He and young (she was 21 at the time) Jean Seaborg made one of the best screen couples ever. My favorite scenes:
Michel drives the stolen car in the beginning of the film, and he starts to talk to us, the audience. The day is nice, the sun is shining, and the life is beautiful...
Michel and Patricia drive in the convertible. The wind plays with her short hair. We only see the back of her head and her neck. Michel tells her that he loves the girl with a beautiful neck, wrists, knees, but she is a chicken...
Patricia comes to the hotel to find Michel in her bed. They start talking about nothing and about very serious things. They smoke, she tries to find a good place for her new poster, and he wants to sleep with her. In the end of the scene, his face, he looks at her - there is love in that look...
There is more - I am sure everyone who saw it has his/her favorite scenes.
Movie Review: Women and Money
Summary: 5 Stars
First, I must say I enjoy these types of movies. Characters who are living on the edge of society, almost oblivious to it. That obviously says something about me, the viewer, the interpreter. It also says something about how I view reality. As Marx noted, humans are self-interested creatures at the core. The rest is constructed fluff. This movie, for me, flows along that premise.
Second, I had read nothing on this film until after I saw it a couple days ago. I knew Jean-Luc Godard was a very influential filmmaker, but little about this film itself. When I first saw the jump cuts I thought, "what the h&*@?" Others say those were political comments, revolutionary, forced, or just plain amateurish. What Roger Ebert conveys is Godard had to cut 30 minutes of film, so he went through and cut out anything he found boring. Sounds logical. This led to the final product, which includes the jump cuts. Well, I think as a style it ends up working. This is a "rough" film about an "amateur" criminal. Perhaps along its core is a universal political statement about social authority and the individual reactions to it. In the movie people die, and they die through the unpolished style of the main character, who simply lives how he chooses.
Third, to me, the camera work, the acting, the script, all flow seemingly into a very stylized film that pays homage to the petty crime drama genre. In a way it is Reservoir Dogs before Reservoir Dogs. But it is also more. It tells the truth about love. Love isn't as simple as meeting somebody, sleeping with them, marrying them, having children, aging, and dying. Love, like life, is beautiful but messy. This film matches love and life perfectly. Just as amazingly, like the other film I mentioned, it manages to remain "on the fringe" of cinema while reinventing the industry in an important way and becoming a topic in mainstream discussions about film making. Certainly we have moved on. Breathless is not the only great movie ever made. There are movies made today that may even be its equal. Breathless becomes immortal, then dies.
Movie Review: This film left me 'Breathless'......
Summary: 5 Stars
Perhaps I will be the first to admit something no self-respecting film critic would say about such a brilliant period of filmmaking, The French New Wave (a movement that was solidified between the late 1950s and 1960s). I didn't like BREATHLESS the first time I saw it. In fact, I even had the audacity to publish a review here, that first time, stating that I didn't like it because of its style, as well as the overall way it left me feeling (completely unresolved). Of course, no one found my review helpful. I had a lot of nerve, taking on one of the most definitive films of that era and boldly putting it down! Upon second reflection, I realize that the feeling it left me with was intended, and also why it was hailed as one of the greatest films from the time period. Therefore, I felt compelled (since I deleted that old review) to properly acknowledge BREATHLESS, directed by Jean Paul Belmondo, as the masterpiece that it is.
As far as the story goes, I don't want to waste too much space, here, re-telling it. I will say that Jean-Paul Belmondo, as Michel, our "anti-hero" is deliciously unsavory and the ultimate wise guy. This thug idolizes Humphrey Bogart and feels very comfortable to make the stand as an anarchist in the face of the law, society and his girlfriend, Patricia (Jean Seberg). BREATHLESS follows these two and their exploits, through jagged camera angles and really thrives on a "less is more" approach. There is a great deal of subtlety here. That includes numerous, off the cuff references to cinema, the director and his work as a critic, and plenty of double entendre. I really reccomend this, because if a film has the capacity to drive someone to such frustration and irritation and then bring about a total 180 degree change of heart so many years later, that is certainly an example of compelling cinema.
Movie Review: Godard's best
Summary: 5 Stars
Godard saw that amateur films of family and friends had a poignant nostalgia and an immediacy that was lacking in American films. Even the great Hitchcock working in America at well-financed studios produces his masterpieces with great deliberation and finesse creating a plastic art. So Godard mixes improvisation, street scenes shot from within a box on a wheelchair and captures Parisians as they really are in their banality, in their recognizable humanity, and therefore, the thrill of humankind in recognition.
The Belmondo character smokes his fat Chesterfields exactly like Bogart, his gangster screen mentor. So the director interjects his admiring eye on American film actors within the storyline. Belmondo impersonates Bogart, his many personal screen quirks, but then the stoic Bogey is exaggerated, a modern stalking horse for future punkdom. You could almost see the swinging 60's five years in advance as Belmondo and doll-like Jean Seberg prance about Paris, breaking the stodgy rules of their 1940's,1950's parents, making love on a whim, making banal, pseudo-intellectual references, outlandish statements - I've had lovers, many, anyone I see, blahhh blah, I'm pregnant - so what - let's get under the sheets, banality under amazing visual setups in a plain room for thirty minutes. Then there's the cuts from moment to moment, a two or three minute cut to the same shot with the car driving through Paris - a parade of diplomats - a policeman on the trail of Belmondo interwoven, so we have the effect, especially in black and white, of a documentary spliced together by an amateur.
These are all very original ideas, which I think along with One Life to Live make Godard a heavy weight in the pentathlon of great directors.