Breathless

During moth of June, I took it upon myself to watch as many foreign movies from 60's from '1001 movies' as I can. There were multiple reasons behind it. Firstly, I watched very few foreign movies in the month of May, so I wanted to make up for it. Secondly, I had seen very few 60's movies from 1001 list, even fewer than 50s and I thought I can rectify that before putting up that list on the blog. So, I started looking around on all possible sources - Netflix, YouTube. Fortunately Ruth@Flixchatter also wrote this article at around the same time which also helped - actually I saw the concerned movie from the same link. Even though I am still working on it, I saw around 10 movies that can fall in the category above. One of them was Jean-Luc Godard's first directorial effort Breathless(1960) which is also considered as one of the first and most influential movies from French New Wave period. Most importantly known for innovative techniques used and its style, it is easy to see the impact it might have had at the time of its release.

Michel Poiccard is a small time criminal who is on the run from Police. On his way to meet a girl he is in love with, he steals a car in Marseille and is on his way to Paris with Police are on his tail. In an attempt to get rid of them, he panics and has to kill an officer. After coming to Paris, he gets hold of a girl he has come to meet in Paris - Patricia Franchini, an American journalism student selling New York Herald Tribune on streets of Paris. He wants to go to Rome and he wants her to come with him. However, she isn't convinced that she loves him as yet and hence is reluctant to go with him. This pretty much is all the plot there is to it and most of the film is about him trying to convince her to go with him and her rejecting him. As the movie goes forward, it becomes very clear that all this plot is not really much important to the movie. We don't learn much about pasts of either lead and even story doesn't seem to be in hurry of going anywhere. As we go forward, Michael keeps on getting himself in more and more trouble with Police tightening their grip around his neck as with a murder of police officer, he is in much serious trouble. At one point, even Patricia learns about all his escapades which should make the final consequences intriguing. However, there is much more emphasis on their multiple conversations between the two leads walking around, driving in various stolen cars or in Patricia's tiny apartment and let me say it right here that I found that to be the most fascinating aspect of the story. Both the actors, especially Jean Seberg, carry out their duties poignantly. Their conversations touch upon a lot of obscure topics but what takes center stage here is not their dialogues but sexual tension that keeps on building between them. Personally, first 10-15 minutes of the movie felt like too much of randomness, we are being thrown into middle of something without any knowledge of what's happening. However, soon enough with entry of Jean Seberg, it settles down pretty nicely.

French New Wave basically was a bunch of film critics, who found the traditional way of movie-making rather formulaic and instead of lamenting about the state, they decided to make movies themselves to break these shackles and set the example in front of everyone as to how to do it. Since this is one of the pioneer and most influential movies of new wave, these aspects are certainly very much visible throughout the movie. Micheal seems to reflect Humphrey Bogart in his classic noir characters, being slick and detached from everything around him and also his physical appearances with tilted hat and cigarette on lips. And so is Patricia who keeps on denying Michael pretty much just because she can and because she doesn't feel as much emotionally attached as him, two predominantly male characteristics.  Fellow New Wane director Francois Trauffaut who wrote the script for it does a masterful job here to keep this rope taut throughout the long takes of conversations. Trauffaut incorporated whole bunch of cultural references in his script - one I was happy to catch was reference to Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob Le Flembeur(1956). I am not exactly sure if that was intentional or not but since Melville was still in good books of both Godard and Trauffaut then, maybe it was as he even played a small part in it as well. However, this New Wave was not only limited to breaking the norms of story-telling. This also introduced lot of different norms in movie-making as well. Use of hand-held camera almost throughout the movie, use of crowded streets to shoot with horde of people around, minimal use of artificial lights, improvisation of scenes and dialogues while filming is just to name a few. Most of these techniques may not be very revolutionary now, however what counts here is thinking outside the box to achieve significantly different and even better result.

BUT...Yes there is a but even here. I bet you did not see this coming. But there are few things that did bother me and worst part of it is they are enough for me to prevent it from being one of my personal favorites. Firstly, I do not understand what is the big deal with so called breaking up the fourth wall ? I am little biased here because I have been brought up on constant fodder of Indian movies since I was a kid and there it was always done very cheaply. With that as a background, I always associate this 'breaking up fourth wall' stuff with being incredibly cheesy. I agree that either here or even in most of Bergman movies, it is done to much better and serious effect but I still don't see what's the big deal. Next and little more importantly, Jump Cuts. There is an interesting story behind this. Godard wanted to reduce the run time as he thought it to be too long for distribution and instead of cutting down whole scenes, he decided to cut little bits from the scenes itself, giving it jerky and sudden feel. He did one more really important thing to highlight this, that is background music track is continuous even though scene looks like jumping forward a bit. I am sure that this is really smart, especially from technical aspect. However, it bothered me a little while watching it, especially during the car conversation of two leads. I read all this after watching the movie and even though I do realize the importance and influence of this, I can not shake off the fact how much it bothered me while watching it.

Third and certainly the most important thing actually has to do with French New Wave as a whole than just this particular movie and probably was also highlighted by the fact that, as I stated before, I was watching other foreign movies from 60s as well, particularly Antonini's L'Avventura(1960) and La Notte(1961). I can not shake off the feeling that all these French directors(I saw Jules and Jim(1962) and Last Year at Marienbad(1961) right around at the same time) are trying little too hard to be taken seriously, to be considered intellectuals. Maybe it's just me but it felt like they try to make their movies purposely obscure to the verge of being pretentious and as a result end up isolating, disconnecting them from their viewer. Reason I bring Antonini's trilogy in discussion is because even he handles lot of esoteric subjects in his trilogy but I did not feel disconnected from either of the movie. So, unfortunately, Breathless turns out to be another movie in what I call myself to be 2001: A Space Odyssey category. I know the importance of it in the grand scheme, I even understand and appreciate it. I really know that what it's most important achievement is it created a path for many more movies to follow and is instrumental in where movie industry is right now, just like 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, despite all that Breathless has to be the movie that I respect and appreciate the importance of, but personally do not get the appeal of.

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