Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless

Modern movies begin here, Roger Ebert famously wrote in his review of this cult 1960 film that changed the face of cinema forever.

I watched Breathless for the fourth time yesterday in less than a year. The first time I saw it, it did not make a great impact on me. It’s only because directors over the years, especially action filmmakers, have done that sort of thing so many times. I couldn’t see what was so special about it, and I hadn’t watched any New Wave cinema either. Later as I became enamoured with another New Wave film, Truffaut’s masterpiece, The 400 Blows, and began to read on the movement, I realised Breathless’ seminal contribution to modern cinema.

However, it is one thing to admire a film, and quite another thing to love it. I’ve admired the craft and diligence of movies like Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. But they do not evoke the intensity of emotion in me, like perhaps Meirelles’ City of God or that Scorsese masterpiece, Taxi Driver. Breathless, I thought, would forever belong to the former category, of movies I admire but don’t really feel much about.

However, Breathless began to surprise me. I watched it again, about six months after I’d watched it the first time, and began to fall in love with it. And since then, ever since I’ve gone back, I’ve found something new. Its crackling humour and wit, the overriding narcissism of its lead characters and the constant playing with pop culture archetypes make it a hell of a ride every time I see it.

My favourite scene remains the conversation between Michel and Patricia in her apartment. It is a long scene, more than fifteen minutes long. It was particularly praised for using cinema to portray life in a realist sense. And really, it is how two lovers would talk. You don’t feel that they are speaking dialogues, which was precisely Godard’s aim. He famously wrote on the sets, and placed the actors in situations and improvised from there on.

It also brings to the fore, the modern urban existentialist crisis. Both characters are talking about themselves, and in a way to themselves. This narcissism is evident throughout the film, everything being expressed in self-centred terms. Towards the end, Patricia sums it up well – When we talked, you talked about yourself, I talked about myself, when we should have talked about each other.

There are more memorable moments. Patricia, a journalist, goes to a press conference to interview a novelist, played by Jean-Pierre Melville and I find the dialogue here fascinating.

Can one believe in love in these times?
Love is all one can believe in.

What is important in life?
Two things.
For men, women.
For women, money.

What is your greatest ambition in life?
To become immortal, and then die.

And yet other little, endearing moments throughout, the hallmark of a truly great work of art. Breathless’ radical techniques of using jump cuts and hand-held cameras to shoot introduced an entirely different way of making movies. It is amusing to think now that both these revolutionary facets were brought about by necessity. Godard found the movie 30 minutes too long and chopped off anything he found boring, leading to the jump cuts. And the hand-held camera innovation occurred because they didn’t have enough money for sophisticated equipment.

Godard, the daring auteur of the 1960’s, went on to make more great films, like the hilarious Bande a part(1964) and Alphaville(1965).

It would be safe to say though, that Breathless remains the film that defined him. Its the most passionate liaison with his great obsession, the cinema.