Breathless
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Features
• Black & White
• Full Screen
• Subtitled
• NTSC
In Theaters : 07 February, 1961
DVD Release : 20 November, 2001 |
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Breathless description
The movie that heralded the French New Wave movement, this lean and exciting 1959 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard (A Woman Is a Woman, Weekend) broke new ground not only in its unorthodox use of editing and hand-held photography, but in its unflinching and nonjudgmental portrayal of amoral youth. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg play two young lovers on the run from the law after Belmondo kills a cop and steals a car. Soon they are on an odyssey through the streets of Paris searching for some money he is owed so that he and his American girlfriend can escape to Italy. As a chase picture it features some startling photography on the streets of Paris, but as a romance it defies expectations, existing as part tragedy and part Bonnie and Clyde crime movie. The result is a wholly original film experience. Inspiring not only a remake starring Richard Gere but numerous films and television series, Breathless is an essential part of motion picture history. --Robert Lane |
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Breathless Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
The First of the French New Wave is Really Simple
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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.
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Breathless dvd movie.