Directed by Jean-Luc Godard and released in 1960, A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) is a French crime drama film that started a new wave in French cinema and proved to be a milestone in the world history of films. Against a backdrop of the 1946 Blum—Byrnes agreements, under which quotas restricting the number of American films to be screened in France were eased, French producers were forced “toward thematic and aesthetic formulas aiming at rapid product placement so as to compete with American films” (Gimello-Mesplomb 141). Breathless is, to a large extent, an attempt to explore whether cinema with unique French identities can truly survive under the overwhelming impact created by the unstoppable and formidable influx of American Hollywood films. It is rebellious in that established norms and conventions had been broken—it proposed to be as “grand” and substantially financed as Hollywood films but it is shot in a way that it is conscious of its identity and the fact that it can never be like Hollywood films.

Michel feeling good about himself. https://nofilmschool.com/2015/11/how-jean-luc-godard-breathless-warning-against-idolizing-hollywood

After World War II, the world entered a stage of globalization and American dominance was omnipresent worldwide, with cinema being one of the most influential media. Globalization infiltrated every aspect of people’s lives, affecting the approaches French filmmakers adopted. Hollywood films were rather mature, with generally accepted rules such as continuous editing that displays a character’s movement in its entirety, how long a shot should last, camera movement, the sequence of shots, etc. And indeed many Italian, German, and French filmmakers followed such patterns, by directly imitating the Americans and making films in which elements from the classic Hollywood text were uprooted and transplanted into a Continental setting (Turner 51). To a large degree, Continental viewers’ expectations and tastes of films were shaped by American films. As a viewer of the modern era, I find Hollywood films much easier to perceive, possibly due to my familiarity with the general patterns they adopt. The slight dislike in me towards this film, if there is indeed any, would be caused by its rejection of Hollywood norms. But I understand that is exactly the reason why it is so attractive—it mocks Hollywood.

Godard is the hero who attempted something absolutely groundbreaking and jaw-breaking. He “created Breathless in the mold of Hollywood: The movie’s plot, characters, and goals hew closely to American genre pictures of the 1930s and ‘40s” (Heller). However, he used jump cuts so masterfully that it made many future editors realize that there was indeed no need to conform to the norms. After all, what is the point of showing exactly how an actor walks up the stairs? A jump cut may be used to just show what is really necessary and meaningful. This jarring effect achieved by jump cuts and the awkward imitation and imagining by the characters represents Godard’s attitude towards the status quo at that time that the Hollywood conventions and types simply could not work for French cinema. At the time when the film was shown to the world, many would find it somewhat “unprofessional”. It has the themes of crimes and shootouts like many Hollywood films but it does not provide complete logical explanation regarding the crimes or render those events the same as they would be in the real world. And this is how the film makes people think. Why did Michel kill the policeman? And why was he limping like that in the end? Clearly, Godard intended these questions in the audiences’ mind, unlike other films.

Michel limping after being shot. https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/breathless-bout-souffle-jean-luc-godard-locations

Mirrors were employed several times in the film and every time the characters expressed their desire to be what they would imagine themselves to be in mind. Crowther, a film critic of the 1960s, commented that “there is subtly conveyed a vastly complex comprehension of an element of youth that is vagrant, disjointed, animalistic and doesn’t give a damn for anybody or anything, not even itself”. Michel and Patricia, both of whom looked into the mirror more than once, had mental images of what they wanted to be and allowed such imageries to govern their behaviors, much like what the filmmakers of the time were doing. In one particular scene at Patricia’s apartment, Michel and Patricia’s reflections multiply in the mirror, meaning that they are confounded by their true selves and their mental images of themselves. The film is similar to Hollywood and French films in form but then again different from them in aspects such as editing. Its rejection of norms is the major reason why it succeeded. It inspired future editors to try new editing styles. And most importantly, it prompts French cinema at the time to ponder upon the question of whether it was just like Michel and Patricia.

Michel and Patricia looking into the mirror. https://dbmoviesblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/03/mirrors-in-films-duality-secrets-and-revelations-and-the-passage-to-the-otherworld/

In fact, it is rather obvious that Michel is under American influence, and Godard intends to push the audience out of the film world, drag them into reality, and then shove them back into the film world in order to accentuate the central message. Michel admires and tries to model himself on the film persona of Humphrey Bogart and dates an American girlfriend. All of this is normal and yet abnormal. People were absorbing American values and standards unwittingly while what they should have done is preserve and develop their own. The sense of reality, or realism, is destroyed through the jump cuts and scenes such as the one where Michel is limping with several rounds of bullets in his body. It is impossible that a person can still walk like that in real life after being shot several times. In this scene, the audience is temporarily released from the tense film world into the reality. It manifests the idea that films are films and thus do not completely reflect the truth. Perhaps it is high time people stopped behaving according to the images they create for themselves.

In one interview in 1960, Godard said, “it’s not really rebelling. It’s annoying not to be able to do what you want” (“Jean-Luc Godard” 00:02:31). In essence, he was disappointed and suffocated by the status quo. And in the trend of globalization, people lost their true selves. What he did can be summarized as efforts to undermine the invisible style of conventional films (Harrison and Mashburn 1943), and such efforts owe, to a large degree, to his seemingly “rebellious” attitude.

 

 

Works Cited

Crowther, Bosley. “Screen: Sordid View of French Life: Breathless’ in Debut at the Fine Arts

Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg Starred.” The New York Times, 8 Feb. 1961,

www.nytimes.com/1961/02/08/archives/screen-sordid-view-of-french-life-breathless-in-              debut-at-the-fine.html. Accessed 30 Sep. 2020.

Harrison, Jeffrey L, and Amy R. Mashburn. “JEAN-LUC GODARD AND CRITICAL LEGAL

STUDIES (BECAUSE WE NEED THE EGGS).” Michigan Law Review, vol. 87, no. 7,        1989, pp. 1924-1944.

“Jean-Luc Godard interview 1960.” YouTube, uploaded by lachambreverte, 16 May 2005,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuNAUmqJd1Q. Accessed 30 Sep. 2020.

Gimello-Mesplomb, Frédéric. “The economy of 1950s popular French cinema.” Studies in

       French Cinema, vol. 6, no. 2, 2006, pp. 141-150.

Heller, Nathan. “Go See Breatheless.” Slate.com, 8 June 2010, slate.com/news-and-

politics/2010/06/how-jean-luc-godard-s-breathless-reinvented-the-movies.html. Accessed        30 Sep. 2020.

Turner, Dennis. “Breathless: Mirror Stage of the Nouvelle Vague.” SubStance, vol. 12, no. 4,

1983, pp. 50-63.