Review of Breathless (1983) by Daren F — 03 Nov 2008

A shocking film despite the age of it and that is a testament to Godard's work. [i]Breathless[/i] is a genre bending, experimental exercise in how to make a movie that is about movies and one that pushes the limits of film itself. The film has a story but it is not really important, Michel kills someone and then runs around Paris with Patricia for a while and we just follow along. Godard has a simple gangster film in front of him and yet it is anything but a gangster film, it is also a romance of sorts and yet it will never be a romance. Godard uses genre to advance his plot not the genres deemed plot and by doing this he can have 30 minutes of his film in a single room with two people changing places and talking about nothing and everything. The French New Wave was seen as an almost improvised style and you get that feeling in this film, everything seems so natural and things just happened and Godard went with it.

Godard uses his camera, the beginning of the hand held, to give us, the audience, a sense of reality and yet by doing this he pushes us away and forces us to remember that this is a movie and nothing more. He does this again when we sit in a car with Michel and Michel talks straight to the audience or we have "jump cuts" where Godard filmed more dialogue and then just cut it and so in the middle of a conversation we jump to a new one and continue on with that. It is odd how this style puts the audience in the clear position of understanding this is all fake but also by using these techniques it almost makes it that much more realistic.

The last point I will make to try and express my obsession with this film after only one viewing is Godard's obvious love of film, like Truffaut in [i]The 400 Blows[/i], we have Michel becoming the French Bogie and we have them running around in movie theaters and stopping to just stare at pictures of the great Bogie. And when I see Godard's love of film and his seemingly ease of expressing his style with his films it is hard not to love it. It is hard not to fall in love with this film and to want a study it and watch it again and again. Like [i]The 400 Blows, Bicycle Thieves, Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, and Persona,[/i] Breathless has an ease and grace about it that gives it that little extra bump into the greatest films ever made and this auteur style of the film makers makes their films enjoyable and bona fide classics.