Breathless
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Movie Reviews of Breathless
Movie Review: Belmondo is like the French Steve McQueen
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great movie. See this movieMovie Review: The First of the French New Wave is Really Simple
Summary: 4 Stars
What interests me is Truffaut's and Godard's very simple story is its ability to convey the nihilism of the main characters. I believe it deserves at least as much attention as any of the evolutionary film making leaps that went into the film making.
The story is simple enough: Michel Poiccard (Jean Paul Belmondo) is a petty thief whom within the first five minutes of his appearance on screen has the cops on his tail because he has stolen a car. Not being particularly bright, he shots the patrolman who pulls him over and leaves the scene of the crime rife with incriminating evidence. The rest of the film, some eighty odd minutes consists of Michel chasing down money owed to him from earlier petty crimes; trying to keep one step ahead of the police and know what they know of his whereabouts; hanging out with and trying to sleep with Patricia Francini (Jean Seaberg), an American student at the Sorbonne and sometime writer for the Herald-Tribune--one gets the impression that the reason she is with him is that it is artistically inspired slumming for a novel she is working on. It is Patricia who will ultimately betray Michel when her future in Paris is threatened by possibility of the loss of her visa and passport she willingly leads the police to him. While they are still partners we are given an interesting look at the Paris underworld.
The world of petty thievery and the criminals on the margins of society who are the primary subject of Breathless were a group that Godard was in a good position to expostulate upon. Having become totally obsessed with cinema while he was student at the Sorbonne, ostensibly studying ethnology, he was cut of from his families finances when they found out that ostensibly meant not at all and he had to subsist through petty theft. The film--working often as a biography of Michel--shows a world of inactivity. We see him sleeping, trying to put together the money that is owed him, comparing clothes with other petty thieves and trying keep Patricia amused and hopefully in bed. He has absolutely no short term goals and his one ambition, going to Italy is little more than a pipe dream and is totally unrealistic. Michel lives in a world that is totally sensory and sensual. There is nothing about his character that suggests he could go beyond this, or that he wishes to. Even worse than his sloth, is the fact that he is a total moral bankrupt: his code of conduct is so totally self-interested and egocentric as to be frightening. In a word, it is degenerate.
Patricia is Michel's counterpoint in the film and though she comes from a different class background and has long term goals that presumably are not parasitic--being a journalist and novelist--she is just as morally repugnant as he is. Although bright, intelligent and well educated she is totally self-absorbed. As Dwight Macdonald points out about the bedroom scene between Patricia and Michel "...it becomes evident, through many small touches of dialogue and expression, that each lover is so bound by childish ego as to be unable to make contact with the other, that they are emotionally impotent." Patricia's self-centeredness can be seen in her reading of Faulkner to Michel and insisting on its beauty (he does not speak English) her constant changing of facial expressions in the mirror and her insistence that Michel acknowledge the beauty of a Renoir reproduction that hangs on her wall. Neither are trying to connect with the other on any but the most superficial level. They are simply using each other. It may not be evil, but it certainly is amoral.
Two amoral characters would not be all that threatening, but as Pauline Kael points out, what makes the film so disturbing is just how little the characters give a damn about anything. "This new race lives for the moment because that is all that they care about." The group of people Michel is representative of are marginal and have no stake in society, do not accept the tenets of loyalty or even a code of conduct going beyond meeting and satiating immediate wants. Patricia is just as dangerous for different reasons though. Although she has of vision of the future for herself "she is so free that she has no sense of responsibility of guilt.... The codes of love and loyalty...depend on stronger emotions than her idle attachment to this lover...." People like this represent a danger to society that goes beyond their numbers because the damage they can do is totally out of proportion with their numbers.
What finally makes Breathless so unique amongst underworld films is its differences from the gangster films that preceded it. Michel is almost a polar opposite Rico Bandello. Where Rico is chaste, Michel is a fornicator. Where Rico is obsessed with power and making it, Michel could care less as long as there are cars to steal and fun to be had. They both ultimately are brought down by their big egos and stupidity though.
Movie Review: Experimental and True-To-Life: An Improvised Masterpiece
Summary: 4 Stars
What can one say about BREATHLESS that hasn't already been said? From the opening moments of the film, I was shocked by the camera work. It was not until after I had seen the film that I learned about its "groundbreaking techniques" and the fact that many people consider it the beginning of modern cinema. So I can only tell you my initial impression of the film: this does not feel like 1959. The close-ups in the opening sequences, the playfulness of Jean-Paul Belmondo's acting style, the spontaneous dialogue and feeling of improvisation-all of these aspects led me to believe that the film was quite modern. Like a good piece of jazz music from the 1950s which can still shock & awe today, BREATHLESS won me over in its opening sequences. It is definitely "in your face" filmmaking at its best.
One thing that BREATHLESS certainly nails is the relationship between our "Bonny & Clyde" characters. Many people have complained about the "bedroom" sequence, citing its length, lack of scripted dialogue, and the like. It would never have survived in modern cinema. However, Godard manages to capture something in these "spontaneous" sequences. I really felt like they were a casual couple. Their lines are not perfect. They are reacting to one another. It's like we've been placed in their bedroom and we feel as if we are a hundred miles from any theater. This is life. Is it true that life is a bit boring at times and lacks a script? Yeah. But perhaps that is his point. BREATHLESS, despite its titles, "breathes" life into its script and characters by allowing them to improvise their way through the film.
That being said, I think that all "groundbreaking" films are destined to get certain things wrong. In particular, BREATHLESS "feels" a bit too experimental. That is to say, it is an experiment in going against the grain and it is (sometimes) painfully aware of that fact. Let's take the "jump cuts," for instance. While Godard may have paved the way for modern "quick cuts," his jump cuts often occur within a scene and give the film an "amateur" feel at times. Remember when you made the videos for Spanish class and had to go back and "fix" a line error? Do you remember the awkward cuts and how that would effect both the visual and auditory aspects of your movie? Well, that's kind of what happens in BREATHLESS. In fact, it happens so often that one wonders if he wasn't trying to go for that effect. It is distracting at several points in the film and I am one who would've recommended a bit more polish in places.
Overall, I would recommend you see this film if you are interested in film history and seeing the so-called "great films." BREATHLESS is the start of something huge and is often regarded as a pinnacle work of one of the world's greatest directors of all time. But if you're looking for a date movie or something for the whole family, I'd probably choose something else. There's a bit too much of "life" in this movie to make it suitable for mindless popcorn munching.
Movie Review: Important for your knowledge of film history
Summary: 4 Stars
If you don't see this with the proper context, it can be a bit of a headscratcher as to why this movie is important. It's a bit like watching "Birth of a Nation"; it's hard to get that sense of "D.W. Griffith was there FIRST", especially since the film's content is, to say the least, appalling. So, in a nutshell: French film between the 40s and the 60s was largely focused on big, lavish literary adaptations. It was staid, it was pretty vapid in some respects artistically (although there are some very beautiful films from that time such as "Children of Paradise", available from the Criterion Collection), and it was safe for the unwashed masses, despite the artistic world surrounding it. You also have to remember that at the time, films weren't considered art by the academics of the day, they were "mere" entertainment.
A group of filmmakers decided to try and change this, and the country got swept up. "Breathless" was something totally new and different and furthermore, it made a mint at the box office (not a commonly mentioned fact, but part of the reason the New Wave took off was that the early films made money) If you followed the American indie scene in the mid-90s, it was much the same way; ANYBODY could get a movie made, and there were stunning surprise hits.
So that's why "Breathless" is so important and why so many people love it.
That said, as an actual movie, it's dated, both from the fact that its techniques have been ripped off so many times and the fact that in a simple technical straightforward sense, it wasn't that good a movie in the first place.
Visually, it is excellent. All those using DV camcorders now would do well to imitate Godard's use of handheld camerawork; it's obvious he meticulously planned every shot and didn't just improvise like a lot of them. He knows how to frame his shots and how to use camera motion. Actingwise, especially considering the script, it's also quite enjoyable.
If you don't want to read criticism of this film, stop reading; I give this three stars on the above merits plus one star for historical value.
In other respects, it's horrendous. "Breathless" never develops a point; the plot is ill considered and more often than not feels like an inept parody of American B-movies, not a tribute. Unlike the movies he's imitating, "Breathless" has no sense of urgency and offers us no reason to care about the characters, especially the lead, who's basically just another jerk. I'm unimpressed by Godard's constant film referencing or the placement of some of his jump cuts; they add nothing.
Part of this is, as I said, the fact that the film has been ripped off so many times that its techniques are no longer new. But just sit down with some work from Welles, Powell and Pressburger, Yasujiro Ozu, Bunuel, or Alfred Hitchock, watch that and then "Breathless", and you realize that they have something Godard doesn't; a care for the story in addition to the care for the images.
Movie Review: He called you a little b*tch
Summary: 4 Stars
Although moist of the films that I watch derive from Japan, China, or South Korea, I have decided in recent months that I want to expand the number of movies that I watch from Western countries. While I still have a hard time stomaching a number of American films, I have been watching a few French films that I have enjoyed. I found Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraļ to be quite outstanding and I enjoyed Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl. Also, being that my nearby independent DVD rental place carries many of his films, I have rented a few of Godard's films. The first one I watched was Band of Outsiders which I found to be quite enjoyable, but the next two films, Tout va bien and Contempt left me quite cold, the former because I found it to be pretentious schlock and the latter because simply I was not in the mood to watch the film. I did enjoy Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis though although, at first, I thought it was a bit pretentious as well. Another film that I watched was Godard's debut feature length film À bout de soufflé or Breathless.
Now, I am far from an expert when it comes to French film, but I understood that Breathless was the film that set off the French New Wave of cinema and that it and Godard also had a major impact on Japanese New Wave directors such as Oshima Nagisa and Imamura Shohei. If this is truly the case or not is not important, what is important though is that this film has had such an impact on not just French film, but it supposedly revolutionized filmmaking in general. However, while watching the film the first time, all I could think was "what is the big deal?"
Breathless tells the story of Michel Poiccard, a young car thief who lives day by day engaging in petty crimes and trying to sleep with as many women as possible. One day Poiccard is spotted speeding by a cop on a motorcycle. Being that he is in a stolen car at the time, Poiccard shoots the policeman and hurries off to Paris. Broke, Poiccard tries to get money from his girlfriends who include the twenty-year old American Patricia Franchini who works as a journalist. Poiccard desires Patricia to hurry off to Rome with him, but without money this is nothing more than a pipedream. With the police hot on his trail, how much time does Poiccard have and does Patricia truly want to go with him and, although she is supposedly pregnant with his child, does she truly love him?
Supposedly one of the key points of Godard's style of filming was the importance handheld cameras played in that they were used on location and removed the making of the film from the studio so it lost some of the overly slick look of films made in the studio. Also Godard's use of jump shots is to be noted as well as the film's slick jazz soundtrack. Does all of this equal an enjoyable film? I think it leads to a passable one with some good moments and a film that opened doors for the New Wave of film sweeping France.