Remembering: “Breathless (1960)”
Breathless, also known in France as, À bout de soufflé (literal: ‘out of breath’) is the feature-length debut of acclaimed-French director, Jean-Luc Goddard. Released in 1960, the film is often cited to be part of what is colloquially known as, “French New Wave,” meaning in-short, a broader movement within French filmmaking, beginning sometime in the late 1950’s, on-throughout the 1960’s. The movement itself, known to deconstruct established narrative and filmographic norms, principles, expectations or conventions, etc., can be paralleled to Dadaism of the art-world in the early 1900’s. Notable names associated to French New Wave include directors Agnès Varda, François Truffaut, and many more.
In laymen’s terms, films of this period can be described as avant-garde (to a certain extent), arthouse, aesthetic, stylized, though some may find these films pretentious or indulgent, lacking structure. Personally, I find what senses and mantras emanant within films of this period to be poetic, exploratory, profound (at-times), beautiful, if-hypnotic. A relative-correlation: French New Wave feels like spiritual kin to the literary movement of beat-poets like Kerouac or Ginsberg around the same time. Some may appreciate the (seeming) formlessness and if-amorphous exposition of narrative-structure and storytelling, or rather, the lack thereof. To me, Godard’s Breathless is a one-of-a-kind movie that applies its contemporaneous, artistic concepts to make a profound, visceral, engaging and unforgettable experience.
Despite everything previous, Breathless has about a simple plot as any to carry and weave us (the proverbial ‘us’ as-in, the viewer) through this whimsical, bluesy, brush-stroked world: a young man named Michel, on the run for murder, goes on the lam with Patricia, a woman he’s seeing. That barebones, thread of a plot, however, carries many hats off its hangers, to which the film visually explores themes of identity, truth, society and love. The dialogue itself, ample and rife with an almost-blunted rejection of pretension, comes off the screen with unmatched vulnerability, exploring and longing (at least, according to my inference). Michel and his love interest, Patricia, share ambling, rambling talks of death, dating, money, jobs, music, all with this lackadaisical sweep of youth and transience, as if themselves representative of passing interests, whispers in the air.
I was unlucky to wait for quite some time in my life before watching this movie, yet, conversely, I was lucky to have waited to be at a point that I could appreciate its deeper meanings. If you are a fan of filmmaker Terrence Malick, Badlands - a movie perhaps indebted to Breathless - serves as its closest American counterpart, both with subject matter and dream-like exposition (though the latter is undoubtably, quite a different film altogether). Elements of crime and love in Breathless are so effortlessly combined, the acting un-provoked but almost teased, as if the director was a fly on the wall, it felt. At-first, Breathless opens with a fleeting feeling of whimsicality, carried by its accompanying jazzy, childish score, but soon evolves at unexpected times, strengthened by the dialogue and earnestness of its writer.
Jean Serberg as “Patricia” and Jean-Paul Belmondo as “Michel” in Breathless.
Yes, Michel is both, an unlikely yet charming protagonist, and abhorrent, firmly-unlikeable. His rampant, stream-of-consciousness “observations” are presented as belligerent chauvinism, sexism, a need to embody his idol, Humphrey Bogart. Nobody buys his schtick, so he needs Patricia, who indeed, is perhaps the only person in his life to play audience to his delusions. Patricia, meanwhile, is ransacked with working class troubles, humble-to-a-fault, and her psyche provides counter-weight to Michel’s grandeur fantasies. She is gentle, considerate, but shown as reserved, while Michel is portrayed diametrically oppositional. Their interplay is one mired by a strange duality: one lives a dream as if reality, and the other lives reality as if a dream; they need, and don’t need one another.
Ultimately, it is Patricia’s perceptivity that lends to the film’s conclusion. She studies the nature of men around her who underscore her efforts, actively misunderstand her. This is where the film succeeds: Godard utilizes sexism of so-called sophisticates to inform the plot and heroine. Patricia comes to revelation during a salacious interview with one famous magnate, who voices what she has already feared about Michel. Conversely, Michel, though self-absorbed and immature to the extreme, subverts our expectations by revealing his paper-mâché’ heart. He loves, adores Patricia, well beyond his own capabilities, and that disconnect is where Godard’s poesy wordsmithing come off the screen, robust.
During one particularly drawn-out scene involving Michel and Patricia, who, in a small Parisian tenement, sitting then standing, laying, all-the-while chain-smoking and talking about nothing-in-particular, I inexplicably found myself having a strong emotional reaction and began to weep, which, was about as furthest from the film’s perhaps-intended tone and aura just moments prior. Suddenly, like a representation of consciousness and youth, I was experiencing time blurring, the way it often does when our lives feel out-of-the-ordinary. No longer were the characters actors on a screen, but people I’m shared a moment with, swept up in, and the emotional honesty, vulnerability, understated sentimentality innate in the screenplay took me by surprise. It was an intense moment for me, one so fewly-marked by a lifetime of film I’ve consumed, countless hours spent looking into other worlds; I can count on my hands the amount of times a film has so deeply moved me, to my soul, my core.
Jean Serberg as “Patricia” and Jean-Paul Belmondo as “Michel” in Breathless.
The film is not without its faults, of course, as is nothing to be perfect in our reality, I suppose. It was perfect for me, the way a home cooked meal is perfect for those who’ve come to expect it. One might look at the loose-characterizations on-screen and have similar criticisms given to author J.D. Salinger, in that, what characters the author wrote were inferred to be different parts of himself, variations of his psyche, and thus, assumedly narcissistic. While I myself don’t mind if Breathless is but an exercise for Godard to simply voice poetry out the lips of his characters (describing the exposition), I imagine others would be weary or bored to watch a bunch of good-looking French sit around and aimlessly talk in black and white, chain-smoking to jazz. A modern, seasoned film-enthusiast might find the lack of traditional drama a turn off, even lazy, while concepts such as “tension” and “stakes,” or other screenwriting buzzwords aren’t readily identifiable within the 90-minute runtime.
Even to a staunchly-genre-minded viewer, there’s a little bit for everybody in this film. There’s poeticism in the world’s capture, a cadre of simple-profundities surrounding the characters (such as an open walk through a busy Paris street, the sounds of echoing typewriters in Tomaltchoff’s office), sleek if-not prophetic editing ahead of its time, and to the nostalgic: a glimpse into an age-long-passed of mid-century, metropolitan France. It’s hard to describe what exactly makes this film so engaging for me, but, for someone like myself (sentimentally-hearted), rare films of the caliber as Breathless (to borrow an infamous, unrelated phrase): “I know it when I see it.”
This film changed my life, and it needn’t hyperbole. It’s beyond rare, when a work of art - be it visual, music, literature or film - moves me, changes my DNA to the core, but, Breathless left me just that. I wanted, needed to create in a way that felt honest for me, and seeing this film helped me realize just that. It’s not so much the film’s plot or subject matter that provoked a kindling within me, but the way it was captured, how the ‘story’ was told. For me, Breathless made me want to provoke something similar in my work (should I be even a morsel of lucky), and that is, simply: beauty.
- A.M.
