The part that Jean Luc-Godard played in The French New Wave was tremendous. This film, with its innovative jump-cuts, catapulted Godard into international fame. His film, Breathless, as well as collaborator Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows, put the New Wave on the map for good. Breathless, like Truffaut's masterpiece, is a mysteriously beautiful film. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Michel Poiccard, alias Laszlo Kovacs, a french criminal running from the police. He meets with his lover, Patricia Franchini, played by Jean Seberg, in Paris, where she works for a newspaper. The film focuses on the dynamics of their relationship, or rather, their lack of a relationship. One of the most famous lines in the film explains it best: "When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other." Considering that this is Michel saying this to Patricia adds so much more to the revelation. Michel is a small, somewhat odd-looking fellow who despises fear and loves sex and movies. In one scene, Michel stands in front of a poster of Humphrey Bogart, from The Harder They Fall. This is just one example of the methods Godard uses of foreshadowing Michel's fate. Patricia is an intellectual, interested in art, music, and literature. She is the more mature one of the two, contemplating the deeper meanings of life and love, while Michel is only concerned about sex and money. Belmondo and Seberg have an interesting chemistry together, very much like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). The dialog is brilliantly witty and Martial Solal's moody, jazzy theme is somewhat reminiscent of a Thelonious Monk recording. The jump-cuts brought a new technique to the screen, but I can't say that they are done particularly well here. Granted, Godard, practically hacked away at his film with a pair of scissors to shorten the length of the film, thus happening upon what would become a new technique. Overall, Breathless is an enjoyable romantic crime drama, with the style of a film noir, and a twist at the end that leaves its audience Breathless!
Review of Breathless
