“Breathless” and “The Graduate” at first glance appear so drastically different from one another. Made ten years apart from one another, in different countries, and one in black and white, one in color, there could really be no similarity between the two, right? The reality is that both of these films are still today looked at as innovative for their time, both of terms of story line and filming. They helped to redefine the vision of what romantic relationships were meant to be in a movie. “Breathless” was part of the New Wave Cinema coming from France, where “The Graduate” was part of the New Hollywood movement, but their stories of love in a different context with stories that were not like the ones told before them are what really ties them together.

“Breathless”, the first film made by critic turned film maker Jean-Luc Godard tells the story of a French car thief Michel, and his American girlfriend Patricia. Godard’s filming techniques were innovative for the time, and this is the movie that made Godard a highly regarded filmmaker. 

Michel and Patricia were casual partners who became more intertwined as the story progressed. Michel who was in trouble for killing a cop, wanted her to runaway with him to Italy, and she is unsure. Patricia casually announces she is pregnant with his child, which is a fact that seems to get blown off, and does not become a focal point of the story at all. Patricia wanted Michel to love her the way that Romeo loved Juliet, but at the same time didn’t want him to love her at all. Michel was in love with her, but came off as only wanting sex. The dynamic between the two was an interesting one that makes you wonder if they actually cared for each other at all. Towards the end Michel says “When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other”, to me sums up their indifferent relationship toward one another. The way that the couple interacted with one another I am sure was taboo for the time, but made sense in the ever-changing times of the 1960’s were youth were beginning to rebel more. Godard’s story line had no problem bringing the conversation of casual sex to the table. Sex was talked about openly and casually throughout and between Michel and Patricia. Towards the end of the film, Patricia interviews an author you says, “American woman dominate met, and French woman have yet too” glorifies not only the changes that were happening in youth culture during the 60’s, as well as the cultural differences between America and France.  During this time frame  were becoming so much more open about who they were and their desires, and this movie emulates that well.

This clip from youtube.com allows you to see their weird interactions with each other, as well as some of Godard’s use of jump cuts.

Godard’s filming style really set the tone for the film. His uses of jump cuts, although abrupt, gave me as a viewer the feeling that I was sitting with the characters while they were speaking to one another. His use of the camera in a moving car and filming in the streets instead of on a closed set was also something that was new and exciting for this era of film.

“The Graduate” made by Mike Nichols’ opens with Simon and Garfunkel’s song Sound of Silence. The lyrics “Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again” sets the tone for this film perfectly. Ben, the main character is so unsure about coming home, and so unsure about his future. As we hear Simon and Garfunkel’s song play in the opening scene showing Ben in several shots, his face lit up, but in dark surroundings looking  depressed as his plane lands sends your mind into a state of wonder.

His return home from college is bittersweet as he is faced with so many expectations from his parents, and their friends on what to do with his life next. He has no idea what is next for him, but knows he wants it to be different and have meaning in his life. His parents and all of their friends are so into what they have and into putting on the front of a perfect life, but to Ben that is not what is important. The night of his welcome home party he is doing all he can to escape from everyone, and then the wife of his Father’s business partner, Mrs. Robinson talks him into taking her home. Once there, she invites him in, which he tries to decline several times with no luck. She forces him to accept a drink, and proceeds to try and seduce him. Ben so incredibly uncomfortable it is comical.  Mrs. Robinson presents herself to him naked and then Ben hears Mr. Robinson return home and  runs to escape the situation he somehow ended up in.

This scene from youtube.com shows the uncomfortable situation that Ben is in.

All seems to go back to normal, until Ben’s birthday. His parents force him to try it on and use it in their pool in front of all of their friends. The scene with Ben alone in the pool in a scuba suit surrounded by the blue nothingness is such profound shot in this film as it makes you think that this is what he thinks his life is. He just trapped in this blue box, barely breathing.

The scuba pool scene from the movie is featured here in this video from youtube.com

This event pushes him over the edge with where he is at in his life, and thus his affair with Mrs. Robinson begins. The affair is turbulent affair has no emotions in it. Mrs. Robinson is clearly using her sex with Ben to fill some sort of void that she is feeling in her own life. They are constantly in the dark, which is a beautiful part of the filming (and ties back into that song from the beginning!). There is no emotion between them, but Ben craves something else from that nothingness and the affair eventually implodes and then ends as Ben goes on a date with the one woman that Mrs. Robinson said he could not – her daughter Elaine.

Ben ends up having a connection with her that was not about sex, and this makes him fall head over heels. However, when Elaine finds out about the affair she of course hates Ben and wants nothing to do with him. His attempt to hold onto the connection he has with her makes him almost obsessive, and leads him on a mission to make her marry him. Ben moves to Berkeley, where she is in college. He follows her, or stalks her depending on how you want to look at it. He eventually reconnects with her, and from that point on asks her everyday to marry him.  In the end, she decides to marry another, someone who is a better prospect in her parents eyes, and someone who has not slept with her mother.

Ben ends up crashing the wedding right after Elaine and her new husband kiss as husband and wife. His irrational decision to crash the wedding causes a stir and Elaine ends up  running away with him out of the church as everyone is yelling. They conveniently run into a bus as it pulls to the stop and they get on, laughing and holding hands the whole way to the back of the bus.  When they finally look forward, everyone is staring at them in silence. As they sit in the silence of the bus, and the scene mellows, it makes you think that maybe neither of them knows what they are doing with their lives from this point on.

Mike Nichols’ use of darkness in this movie emphasizes the affair with Mrs. Robinson, as well as the depressive state that Ben seems to continuously be in.  He uses light in his film to highlight their faces or certain parts of the body, including Mrs. Robinson’s leg which is the focal point of the movie poster. The light also seems representative of the times when Ben is getting out of his slump of not knowing what to do with himself. Nichols also filmed so much on location that you really felt the vibe of the locations that the movie was filmed.

This love story was just so different then any seen before them. Where sleeping with someone who is old enough to be your mother was not normal for the time frame, the casualness of it was something that was becoming more so. Even more unconventional was Elaine maintaining a relationship with Ben after everything that she knew. The things that Elaine was willing to accept for the sake of meaningful connection is almost mind blowing. This film left me with questions about the era. Maybe the casual sex aspect of the 1960’s began to revert a bit in the 1970’s? Maybe people wanted more, but were just lost on how to find it?

Just as in  “Breathless”, “The Graduate” has all of the unconventional sides of a relationship that you don’t expect to see in a film (for the era). Not only did Godard and Nichols tell a story that was not told before, they also gave us endings that you just didn’t expect. While Ben wasn’t shot in the street as Michel was, he does cut himself off from the life he knows through the actions that he makes which is almost like dying anyways.