Breathless           5 stars

I took the chance to see one of the great films of the classic film era. According to many lists Breathless or À Bout de Souffle by French director Jean-Luc Godard ranks as one of the best films ever made. It is part of the French New Wave era in film or Nouvelle Vague, films that appeared rougher than the traditional films of the time. It was released in 1960 and is listed as number 12 on the Films 101 list of the 100 greatest films of all time and stars two actors who went on to have many notable film roles later. The movie was filmed in Paris on a shoestring budget and is entirely in black and white. The story is a simple one. Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a small-time criminal who wears a fedora, always has a cigarette in his mouth and thinks of himself as a tough Humphrey Bogart. But, in fact he is quite unattractive. He survives by pickpocketing and stealing cars and is being hunted by the police for killing a police officer. He has fallen for Patricia (Jean Seberg), a young American journalism student working for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune and wants to enroll at the Sorbonne. Michel begs her to run away to Italy with him and hangs out at her small apartment while he’s not out trying to score some cash. Patricia is all too willing to go along with him despite his being a criminal and his appearance. There is something about his confidence that attracts her. The pair go well together because of their shared narcissism, and their being oblivious to what is going on in the world around them. The film is notable for several things. Godard invented a technique of editing where he cut segments of film within a scene creating jumps. He said he wanted to make the scenes shorter by cutting out the boring parts. (This practice is now common in action films.) Some of the actors were actually the filmmakers themselves including the screenwriter, Pierre Boulanger, writer of the original story, Francois Truffaut, Godard himself and the assistant director, Pierre Rissient. This helped keep the budget quite small. Godard even used handheld cameras in a time when cameras were quite heavy. The film is full of references to other great works or Easter Eggs as they are called. One extended scene in the middle of the film is exceptional where Patricia comes home to her apartment and finds Michel there in her bed. They talk on and on, flirt with each other and finally end up in bed together. The 21-year-old American Seberg who left the US after some bad film reviews to be in French films speaks excellent French and is quite beautiful. She steals every scene she is in. Breathless was Godard’s first directing effort and is considered to be one of the greatest directorial debut films ever, next to Citizen Kane. Godard, of course, went on to make more influential films in the 1960’s. I am glad to have finally seen this classic.