‘Breathless’ was a breath of fresh air

Young thug Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who models himself on the screen persona of Humphrey Bogart, reads a newspaper in front of a poster for the Robert Aldrich movie “10 Seconds to Hell” in a scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film “A Bout de Souffle” — better known to American audiences as “Breathless.”
Young thug Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who models himself on the screen persona of Humphrey Bogart, reads a newspaper in front of a poster for the Robert Aldrich movie “10 Seconds to Hell” in a scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film “A Bout de Souffle” — better known to American audiences as “Breathless.”

Vivre dangereusement jusqu'au bout.

-- "Live dangerously until the end," the French title of the 1959 Robert Aldrich film "10 Seconds to Hell," seen on a poster in "Breathless"

I showed Jean-Luc Godard's "A Bout de Souffle" (1960) -- the movie most of us know as "Breathless" -- to my LifeQuest class recently, as the final installment of a month-long series on movies that "changed everything."

"Breathless" was a last-minute substitution. I'd planned to show Robert Bresson's 1966 "Au hasard Balthazar," a movie that Godard once called "the world in an hour and a half," but the ending of that film is unspeakably sad, and I decided I didn't want to leave the class on that note. Maybe next summer I'll do all Bresson films, starting with "Balthazar." (Or maybe starting with 1959's "Pickpocket," which "Taxi Driver" writer Paul Schrader once said was "where cinema begins.")

I showed "Breathless" because, looking back over the films I'd shown this month -- Richard Lester's "A Hard Day's Night" (1964), Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), and Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" (1951) -- it's not hard to see the movies in conversation with one another.

"A Hard Day's Night" and "Bonnie and Clyde" borrow so liberally from Godard's sensibility that it's impossible to imagine them existing without "Breathless." And "Ace in the Hole" is precisely the sort of -- to use Manny Farber's memorable phrase -- "termite art" that inspired the auteurs of the French New Wave.

It feels almost like I planned it.

"Breathless" is the rarest kind of movie, reflexively described as "classic," that retains a genuine power to surprise and even thrill.

THE SKEPTICS

I am aware that there are skeptics and agnostics and critics who -- having seen "Breathless" in good faith -- dislike the movie. I don't mean to argue with them if they don't like the way the film is edited, or the cryptic nature of the final lines, or the quality of the acting. I half-agree with these criticisms, or at least understand the points of those who make them.

There is a haphazard, desultory quality to "Breathless" that may be due more to actual sloppiness than the studied authorial kind. Some lines seem stilted. The story is so simple that in some ways the movie reminds me of a kind of short film one often sees at film festivals where the (inevitably young) filmmakers are so anxious to commit something to film that they don't bother much with writing.

These intellectual problems are dissolved by the power of the movie, by the romance of "Breathless." It is Godard's first film, the practical application of his theory. It is intended as revolutionary cinema -- an anti-movie movie, a blow against the petty tyrannies of conventional storytelling. Even its detractors must concede it succeeds in subverting the expectations of its audience. Even after the 10th -- or 50th -- viewing, "Breathless" feels cheeky. Punk.

THE STORY

It begins abruptly with young anti-hero Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) stealing a car in Marseilles, then shooting the police officer who pursues him dead. He hides out in Paris, taking up with young American Patricia (Jean Seberg), who sells the New York Herald Tribune in the middle of the Champs Elysees while waiting for her big break in journalism.

Patricia isn't terribly interested in Michel, although she finds him an interesting diversion, and carries on with him as he tries to track down a man who owes him money. He wants Patricia to run away with him to Italy, but when the cops begin to close in, she goes to the police and informs on him.

They shoot him to death in the street, and with his last breath, he calls her -- or the world at large -- a vile name. But he's smirking as he does this, so perhaps it's just his final joke.

The story -- which bears a strong resemblance to the basic plot of Joseph H. Lewis' low-budget noir "Gun Crazy" (1950) -- isn't the point of "Breathless." (Neither is the acting, although Seberg is superbly cast. While Belmondo would go on to prove himself a wonderfully subtle performer, all he's required to do here is pose.)

A VISUAL POEM

"Breathless" is best understood as a visual poem, an experiment with motion and light. Its least compelling elements are those that echo other movies -- the stock footage of Paris seems imported from another world -- and the movie is at its best when it rejects logic for a kind of dream sense.

It's famous for its jump cuts, the stuttering, quick edits that Godard (and maybe more importantly cinematographer Raoul Coutard) used to camouflage the film's limitations. While Godard did not start the project planning to edit it this way, the filmmakers soon realized they could use the cuts to hide problems with lighting and sound, and even to modulate performances.

Once they hit upon this, they employed the cuts throughout, creating a cubist temporality, a way of suggesting the world as it is perceived in motion.

Patricia and Michel are not realistic characters; they're tropes who aren't required to behave rationally. Michel in particular is a hollow man, a callow idiot obsessed with American pulp, particularly Humphrey Bogart. He's the kind of dolt Godard imagined he might have been without the intervening intelligence. Michel isn't a character to believe in so much as identify with.

What is important is the style -- or the rejection of style that becomes the style. "Breathless" is a collage film, a collection of images and allusions to film history, a document of a specific time, place and mindset that has over the years acquired a patina of seriousness the filmmakers never intended.

The notion that people might still remember, might still be discussing "Breathless" more than 60 years after its release, would have seemed ridiculous to the then 28-year-old Godard. They were making a movie for the moment, not for future generations of critics.

I love "Breathless," but I won't argue for its greatness. That greatness -- if it exists -- is accidental; it can't withstand too much intellectual scrutiny. You either love it right away or it grows on you. Or it doesn't. It is a gestural movie, three chords and a cloud of dust, something that can't quite be approached head-on.

Godard had no idea what he was doing; he was only finding out what his new toys could do. And while he'd make better movies, there are none I love so much as his first.

pmartin@adgnewsroom.com

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