Breathless (1960 film)
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| Breathless | |
|---|---|
 original film poster |
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| Directed by | Jean-Luc Godard |
| Produced by | Georges de Beauregard |
| Written by | Jean-Luc Godard François Truffaut |
| Starring | Jean-Paul Belmondo Jean Seberg |
| Distributed by | Films Around the World, Inc. |
| Release date(s) | March 16, 1960 (France) |
| Running time | 87 minutes |
| Language | French |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Breathless (French: À bout de souffle; literally "out of breath") is a 1960 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
Godard's first feature-length film is one of the inaugural and best-known films of the French New Wave. He wrote it with fellow New Wave director, François Truffaut, and released it the year after Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Together the three films brought international acclaim to the New Wave.
Breathless shocked contemporary audiences with its bold visual style and editing—much of which broke the rules of classical Hollywood cinema. Most notable of its innovations were jolting jump cuts and hand-held camera.
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[edit] Synopsis
Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a young thug who models himself after Humphrey Bogart. After stealing a car, Michel shoots a policeman who has followed him onto a country road. Penniless and on the run from the police, he turns to his American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), a student and aspiring journalist, who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the streets of Paris. The ambiguous Patricia agrees to hide him and the two spend their time evading the police and dallying in her apartment, while he tries to raise money for a trip to Italy. Eventually, she betrays him and phones the police. They shoot him in the street and, after a protracted death run, he dies there. With his last breath, Michel whispers "It's disgusting", but the policeman tells Patricia that he told her "you're disgusting".
[edit] Allusiveness
The film is highly allusive, making numerous references to films and to Godard's work as a critic.
Michel's constant lip-rubbing is a direct homage to Humphrey Bogart[citation needed], a poster of whom Michel gazes at in one scene. Bogart is referenced again when Patricia hides from a detective in the movie theatre: audio from The Maltese Falcon can be heard in the background. Moreover, Patricia comments on Michel's similarity to Bogart when she tells him that he is only an image and should say more about himself.
At one point a woman (uncredited) attempts to sell a copy of Cahiers du Cinéma, the magazine for which Godard was a writer to Michel on the street, saying "Monsieur, do you support youth?" He angrily refuses, saying "No, I prefer the old."
The film includes additional references to many other films. In one scene, "Bob the Gambler" is mentioned, which is an apparent reference to the proto-New Wave film Bob le Flambeur (1955). A few American film posters are seen in the streets, including Humphrey Bogart's The Harder They Fall and Ten Seconds to Hell with Jack Palance (who would later work with Godard on Contempt). Michel and Patricia also attend a screening of Westbound.
This allusiveness was unusual at the time, and was a precursor to postmodern cinema such as Pulp Fiction.
[edit] Allusions and remakes
Godard's own Pierrot le fou stars the same actor (Belmondo) and repeats phrases from Breathless (including "We are all dead men on leave" and "Allons-y, Alonso"). Otherwise the plot is very different.
A rarely seen 1976 film by Amos Poe, (featuring a cameo by Blondie singer Deborah Harry playing a woman named Blondie) called Unmade Beds is an homage to and parody of Breathless.
An American remake of the same name was made in 1983, starring Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky, directed by Jim McBride. It is set in California, and the nationalities of the protagonists are swapped: the man is American and the woman is French.
[edit] Principal cast
- Jean-Paul Belmondo as Michel Poiccard
- Jean Seberg as Patricia Franchini
- Daniel Boulanger as the police inspector
- Jean-Pierre Melville as Parvulesco, the novelist
- Liliane David as Minouche
- Henri-Jacques Huet as Antonio Berrutti
[edit] Awards
- 1960 Prix Jean Vigo
- 1960 Berlin International Film Festival: Silver Bear for best director
- 1961 French Syndicate of Cinema Critics: Critics Award for Best Film
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Breathless at the Internet Movie Database
- Discussion of Film 'Breathless' — Podcast of Hubert Dreyfus' lecture in Phil 7: Existentialism in Literature and Film
- Alternative Film Guide review of Breathless
- Original treatment for film by François Truffaut -- in French
