Film Analysis: Breathless – À bout de souffle (1960)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Cinematography: Raoul Coutard
Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg
Production Company: UGC, Films Around the World
Released: 1960
Country: France
Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle or Breathless– released in 1960 – is a French crime drama film originally written by François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. This film was released in 1960, and is credited with being one of the most influential examples of the French New Wave movement. The film is set in the 1960s in the streets of Paris, France. Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a young thug who idolizes Hollywood actor Humphry Bogart, who steals cars and thief’s money from women and passerby’s for fun. While driving in a stolen car from Marseilles, he is chased by cops and ends up shooting and killing one. He then drives to Paris to reunite with American journalist Patricia (Jean Seberg), who he has romantic interest in. Michel is trying to meet a friend to get money he is owed so he can escape the police and flee to Italy and wants Patricia to come with him. As the police close in, Patricia betrays him, and he is killed in a shoot-out in the streets of Paris.
Breathless has many nods to American Hollywood films. Michel (Belmondo) idolizes the Hollywood actor Humphry Bogart, as he attempts to be a hard-faced criminal. There is a moment in the film, while during a police chase Michel stops to admire a movie poster with Bogart’s face on it, and utters, “Bogey.” There is also dramatic music throughout, adding to the crime suspense of this French film, but really an American Hollywood staple. It also is important to note that Patricia (Seberg) is an American student and journalist, the romantic interest of Michel and part of the film’s general conflict. But while this French film has small parts that reflect Hollywood, it also is in great contrast with Hollywood. This contrast is portrayed through its radical film style, as it essentially breaks every rule that cinema had established prior.
This film deals with everyday people in simple human thoughts and interactions, while being shot in a unique way. The narrative itself is fiction, but the characters performance and the setting in which it’s shot is very real to our world and the world of the French audience in the 1960’s. The characters live a simple life with relatively small problems. The overall conflicts include crime, murder, and theft, which are big issues, but the film is shot in mundane places like apartments, cars, and the streets. The dialogue of Patricia and Michel are often jumbled and thrown together almost like they are thinking out loud. The jump cuts and shakiness of the camera adds to the documentary-like feel of the rawness of these characters; who are humans we can relate to.
Godard used the film to begin to explore the ideas and themes which apparently consumed him. The idea of existentialism or existential dilemma’s developed after WWII, which effected thought and culture all over the world, was also present in Breathless. Michel is desperately trying to find ways to make money, escape police, and sleep with Patricia. Patricia is thinking about what makes her happy and feel free. Life is absurd, and the individual is more important than society’s rules. Death is an indifferent event. Love is hard and impossible and complicated. Michel and Patricia’s relationship lacked communication and understanding, even has Michel was uttering his dying words.
Breathless is a French New Wave film that reinvented film form for decades to come. It cost a third of the average cost of a French film at that time, and featured new models of production, rejecting old conventional styles. Godard had never before directed a fulllength film before, only having made a few shorts. Breathless used a handheld Éclair Cameflex camera, which cinematographer Raoul Coutard often shot while being pushed in a wheelchair. It took only 23 days to film. It was shot on the real streets of Paris, instead of constructed sets and props. Godard had a script originally written by Truffaut and Chabrol, but he made up dialogue for the actors as he was shooting. The original film reel was over two and a half hours long, and was made 90 minutes long, an appropriate length for the theatre, through its editing. The film has plenty of jump cuts, long shots, and busy shots. It has characters looking directly into the camera and also speaking to the camera, breaking the fourth wall. These characteristics of film were iconic of the French New Wave, which promoted the idea that the film was a piece of art rather than entertainment, stimulating the audience to think about the story in an intellectual way rather than be absorbed in the story in a psychological way.
