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The film that validated the French New Wave and consummated the now-ubiquitous cinéma vérité, "fly-on-the-wall" cinematography of modern independent film, Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature Breathless, as influential as it's obviously been (one need only gaze as far back as the extended bedroom scene of 2002's Late Marriage to catch a recognizable echo of its ingenuity), still remains as challenging today as it must have been in 1959. Stylistically, the jagged editing technique is what will always call the most attention to itself: Godard chose to snip out small pockets of celluloid almost arbitrarily between most of the action and dialogue, ostensibly to cut down the running time, but effectively to mimic the erratic, shallow attention span of his characters. In turn, the deliberateness of this device tends to distract from the essential simplicity of Godard's narrative, about a killer on the run (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who plots to flee the country with his Parisian lover (Jean Seberg). Revisiting this quaint work of artistry today reveals that Godard, in his vision of existentialist ennui and contemporary youth, has never really been intellectually surpassed in this subject matter by any subsequent film directors. For one matter, his picture's visual impudence alone renders most other cinéma vérité timid in comparison. It's one of the few films of its kind that actually dares to appear as clumsy as possible. |
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Breathless |
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capsule review by André de Alencar Lyon |
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Jean-Luc Godard |
