Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960): France

Reviewed by Michaela Pluskovich. Viewed on DVD.

I am calling for an academy that pays tribute to the films that were ignored in their time of release! Breathless (À bout de souffle) has been an international success since its release in 1960 (US 1961), but won only a handful of awards and, of course, was not even nominated for major awards in the United States. Although 1960 was a year of influential and grand films such as Fellini’s Dolce Vita, Hitchcock’s Psycho, or Wilder’s The Apartment, which all were awarded with Academy Awards, none of them were as revolutionary and progressive in their making as Jean-Luc Godard’s masterpiece Breathless. It seems that once again, as previously in the history of film, the industry was not ready for such an experimental film.

The romantic crime movie, co-written by Francois Truffaut and the director himself, follows the frivolous and flirtatious petty crook Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who lightheartedly hurls himself into a murder by chance. But even while fleeing from the police, all he can think of is to bewitch his chosen girl, the beautiful American Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg), to come with him to Italy. Patricia, who sells the New York Herald Tribune newspaper on the streets of Paris, ironically is oblivious to the crime Michel has committed and proves herself as the naïve matching part to Michel with a subtle mischievousness that will become Michel’s downfall.

While the movie obtains the classic Hollywood story of romance and crime, it is also a challenge to the cinematic status quo. The innovative director of the french Nouvelle Vague movement uses ubiquitous jump-cuts, resulting in unusually interruptive transitions between the shots. This discontinuity draws attention to the editing itself and asks the viewer to pay full attention to seemingly mundane events in the narrative. The editing technique, which resembles one of cutting out the “boring stuff,” creates an unpredictable youthfulness and is underlined by the fast-paced jazzy music in the background and the rapid motion of the handheld camera. This stylistic effect of the film not only upheaves the nervous spontaneity of the young protagonists, which drives the narrative forward, but it brings a certain freshness of joie de vivre right into your living room – even decades after its release.

With regards to the revolutionary style of this film, which still seems as new and untouchable today as it was in the 1960s, it is unquestionably one of the most influential movies of the Nouvelle Vague and left traces in an uncountable number of American movies to come, such as Bonnie and Clyde or The Graduate. Even the character of Michel, the charming gangster with the omnipresent cigarette, became iconic and was assumed by actors like Jack Nicholson and repetitively used by director Quentin Tarantino. So, for everyone who wants to know how it all began and incidentally also likes to enjoy 90 glorious minutes of a French cool gangster, honest romance and the reinvention of cinematic style: be sure not to leave this film noir out of your repertoire.