BREATHLESS

Since the advent of television media types have worried about how the portrayal of violence will affect those who view it. The worry is not so much that we will see Leatherface taking his chainsaw to the bodyparts of his victims and think, "oh hey, that looks like a good idea", but that we will become desensitized to violence, that it could encourage violent behaviour and that those who already exhibit violent tendencies will feel vindicated in doing so. Since these debates have begun we've seen video-games like Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt and films like Saw, Hostel or Battle Royale which often result in the evocation of this buzzphrase "the glorification of violence". Now I don't see how these films do glorify violence, but that is a discussion for another time. I bring up this debate because Michel the lead character in the zenith of the French new wave, Breathless, is a man who models his life upon the stylings of popular culture, envoking in particular Humphrey Bogart circa Angels With Dirty Faces (1938). Michel is a man capable of acts of violence and great sensitivity. The question is thus there to be asked: to what extent has he been manipulated by cinema and other forms of media into adopting this gangster persona and is this the reason behind his acts?

Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a youthful - somehow childlike, petty criminal who gets his kicks stealing cars and looking for girls to pick up. Pursued by the police, Michel ends up confined in a country lane and in a moment of fear shoots dead a policemen in order to make his get away. With the police on his tail he meets with struggling American journalist Patricia (Jean Seberg) the two of whom share a somewhat ambiguous, yet at times romantic relationship. Unaware of Michel's status as a wanted criminal, Patricia allows herself to be seduced into following Michel's dream: to head to Rome. Of course, it's clear from the beginning that this will not end well for the two lovers and the main suspense arises from the evolution of their relationship and Michel's growing sense of detatchment from a world he cannot get a handle on.

The film's french title is A Bout de Souffle, or 'At Breath's End' - which as well as being more poetic strikes me as better suited to this film. Being breathless is associated with being astonished, or surprised - having your breath stolen out from underneath you. Being at breath's end however, suggests a kind of weariness or a sense of the end impending. Breathless expresses a kind of indifferent fatalism which sees Michel beaten down by life, fail to connect with those around him and have his tragic fate brought upon him by the stupidity of another. The story - dreamt up by Truffaut and passed onto Godard - has its fair share of cliches, even for 1960. After all, it is, in simple terms, the story of a man on the run from the law who seeks to be reunited with the woman he loves so that he can make his getaway. It is scarcely any different from the kind of fluff that Hollywood had been producing for many years before. What makes it standout from the pack is a combination of Godard's love of cinema, culture - whether it be high or low and his groundbreaking experimental style of filming and editing.

The techiques of the French New Wave are well documented and this film represents the peak of the artistic ingenuity prevailent during that rich period in film history. Driven largely by financial considerations (which still affected the industry following World War 2) filmmakers began to rely less on having a well structured plot as the backbone to their film, focusing instead on creating a sense of documentary realism influenced in turn by Italian neo-realism. Of course Godard had a general idea of where the story was going, but he left a lot of wiggleroom regarding the matter of how it got there. Each morning, Godard would scribble down lines of dialogue for Belmondo and Seberg, who had a short amount of time to rehearse before shooting. They were also encouraged to improvise which, combined with Godard's unique style of editing gives all their conversations a natural flow. Consider Michel's adlibs as he is driving, at the beginning of the film, before he is pursued by the police, that he "won't be overtaken by a renault" or that a couple of lady hitchhikers are "dogs". These little moments give the film an unforced and organic feel which was characteristic of the new wave. It's little surprise then that Godard conceptualised the film as a kind of 'reportage' or documentary and shot the film, along with cinematographer Raoul Coutard solely on handheld cameras using natural light. This is most evident perhaps when Michel, fleeing from the police makes his way into the surrounding countryside only to be swallowed up into the darkness and fade away from the picture.

Some influential techniques found within this film were brought about not through design but by necessity. Originally clocking in at about 120 minutes, Godard decided that he would have to cut out about 30 minutes in order to make the film more digestable. Rather than remove entire scenes, Godard elected to cut out any moments from within these scenes that he found boring, creating the effect that the camera was jumping from place to place. This shots which may seem somewhat bizarre to the modern viewer were influential to filmmakers - particularly those making action films as a way of maintaining the tension by making it appear that the action is ongoing.

These techniques, as revolutionary as they were, do not solely account for the film's legacy. Belmondo is fantastic as Michel, whose sense of all-pervading cool is now iconic. Despite basing his personality on Bogey, in the years since he has become very much his own man. He can certainly be initiated, along with Elliot Gould's Phillip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, into a list of film's greatest smokers. What works about the character, however, is that underneath the macho bravura, there's clearly a scared little boy that doesn't know what to do next and wants to make a genuine connection with another human being but finds himself uncapable of doing so. It's unclear if Michel genuinely loves Patricia, but he seeks desperately to form a connection between himself and her, whether it be through sex or merely through intelligent conversation. Eventually however, his attempts to make this connection fail and he is left betrayed and alone. Importantly, instead of despairing, he gives up and seems to admit, this life isn't for him - he's your typical outsider, hopelessly detached from the world.

Like Breathless itself, Michel is at odds with the world around him. He's an anachronism who looks at the world and can only conjure up feelings of apathy. The desire to fit in leads Michel to adopt this toughguy persona, but it is because he is scared and alone that he commits the act of violence, not because he holds any belief that violence is acceptable. For Michel this meant a tragic early end to his life. Breathless however ushered in a new age of modern cinema and is one of the most influential films of all time. It is a passionate film about a man who is both passionate and disapassionate and one which I will surely never grow weary of.