Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) arrives at the Ritz/Bourse on Friday, the freshest film in town and the must-see (or must-re-see) film of the summer.
Impudent as the class clown and twice as attractive, this invigorating chase picture, Godard's feature debut, stars the Jean-Paul Belmondo as Michel, an insouciant Paris hood, and the enigmatic Jean Seberg as Patricia, a New York exchange student, doing the Franco-American mating dance on the Champs-Elysees -- as Presidents De Gaulle and Eisenhower summit nearby.
Michel aspires to be like the American outlaws he sees in Humphrey Bogart flicks; Patricia to be like the French intellectuals she reads of in The New York Herald Tribune (which she hawks on the boulevard). They are young, mercurial and in lust, and Godard's film positively vibrates from their beauty and erotic energy. The film, shot in the open air on the streets of Paris in Raoul Coutard's black-and-white cinematography, is crisp as a freshly-ironed shirt and urgent as taxi horn.
Based on an original story from Godard's colleague Francois Truffaut, Breathless combines the fatalistic romanticism of 1940s films with the lively urbanism of its time. The resonant result is both a tribute to old movies and an iconoclastic reinvention of film itself, with jump-cuts edgy as Belmondo and long tracking shots sinuous as Seberg. Breathless boldly draws the line of demarcation between classic cinema and modern movies. The most striking thing about it is that at 50, it still looks like the new kid on the block. It may not be Godard's best film (I'd nominate Contempt) but it is his most purely enjoyable. Interestingly, this gloss on Hollywood filmmaking, an early ripple of what would become the French New Wave, would forever after change Hollywood films influencing A Hard Day's Night, Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate.
Your thoughts about Breathless? Godard? The French New Wave? Belmondo? Jean Seberg? (Seberg, an earthy actress and a suicide at 40, is one of Hollywood's saddest figures. The best biography of her is Mark Rappaport's From the Files of Jean Seberg.)
Oui, Carrie! I just saw TWO IN THE WAVE to prepare, and I think the trailer for this re-release c'est magnifique!— garyk- It's an amazing film that I never ever tire of seeing and a picture that balances a lot of dichotomies: stylized vs. naturalistic, genre vs. something new and previously unseen, black & white vs. the (implicit) color, and not to be forgotten good vs. evil. The two leads are remarkably good and give immortal performances. France looks great and so does Jean Seberg.— ccjroberts
- Yes, it did. Although I recall that Jean Seberg's performance was not particularly well received (or maybe I am remembering her as Joan of Arc)she became a style icon. Oh to be in Paris and find one's very own Jean Paul Belmondo. Breathless and Bonjour Tristesse sent many a young woman in search of romance and adventure, so vividly portrayed by Goddard in this amazing movie.— CPven
- Seberg's clothes in this movie have become classics, updated every year by the Parisian designer agnes b.— carrierickey
- I haven't seen this since 1980-81, when my professor showed it in film class at CCNY. I thought the photography was good, but I thought Godard was a con artist. "A phoney from Phoneyville," as Leo Carillo once said. (Seeing "One + One" recently reinforced that opinion, where all the scenes save those showing the Stones in the studio were some of the hooey of the highest order.) The long, long traffic jam scene in "Weekend" was grand gesture that worked, but otherwise, I find myself thinking of Lou Reed's description of Bob Dylan: "He's the kind of guy you'd tell to shut up at a party." All of which would make Jean Luc happy as a clam, I suspect.— wwolfe
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