A Bout De Souffle (PG.)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Richard Balducci, Jean Pierre Melville. 1960. 90 mins. Black and White French with subtitles.
Among the hype for the 50th-anniversary re-release of his debut, I bet someone will write something akin to, "Even if Godard had never made another worthwhile film his greatness would be assured just by Breathless." And it is probably a large part of the reason why, though most of his subsequent films have done their damndest to turn people against him, people never quite give up on him; that, at the very least, people will go for the forward button rather than the eject when things get just too dull.
Of course, viewers coming to this for the first time may be a bit surprised that this cheap looking amateurish film is some kind of landmark. The film is so crude it often resemblances a group of friends who have just tumbled out of a cinema, being filmed wandering the streets of Paris re-enacting scenes from the crime drama they have just seen.
Even though the two leads spend most of the middle third of the movie in a hotel room gassing, the main reason it is still celebrated is that it appears to be this great unleashing of energy - the handheld camera, the jump cuts, the location shooting with passer-by's staring into the camera, the casual way it dallies with the conventions of a crime dramas, all seems to open up a vista of possibilities.
Plus there's the unique chemistry between Belmondo as the small-time criminal who has killed a cop and Seberg as his American squeeze, who he is trying to persuade to skip town with him.
I first saw it when it was being wheeled out for its 30th anniversary and was completely won over by it. Watching it again though, it just didn't grab me, which I wasn't expecting. It was still good to see all the classics moments - the lights coming on along the Champs-Elysses, the moments when the leads speak straight to camera, Jean Seberg with her stripy top and pixie hair crying "New York Herald Tribune" as if she was in the coolest M&S advert ever. But overall, it just didn't do it for me anymore.
Spoilers – at the end Seberg decides to turn Michel into the police, presumably because she realised that Belmondo's strutting street hoodlum posturing was already old hat. And she's right, what's the point of making an innovative revolutionary film if people are just going to cling onto it with a stultifying reverence. It was a marvellous breakthrough, it's still charming, but let it go.
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Richard Balducci, Jean Pierre Melville. 1960. 90 mins. Black and White French with subtitles.
Among the hype for the 50th-anniversary re-release of his debut, I bet someone will write something akin to, "Even if Godard had never made another worthwhile film his greatness would be assured just by Breathless." And it is probably a large part of the reason why, though most of his subsequent films have done their damndest to turn people against him, people never quite give up on him; that, at the very least, people will go for the forward button rather than the eject when things get just too dull.
Of course, viewers coming to this for the first time may be a bit surprised that this cheap looking amateurish film is some kind of landmark. The film is so crude it often resemblances a group of friends who have just tumbled out of a cinema, being filmed wandering the streets of Paris re-enacting scenes from the crime drama they have just seen.
Even though the two leads spend most of the middle third of the movie in a hotel room gassing, the main reason it is still celebrated is that it appears to be this great unleashing of energy - the handheld camera, the jump cuts, the location shooting with passer-by's staring into the camera, the casual way it dallies with the conventions of a crime dramas, all seems to open up a vista of possibilities.
Plus there's the unique chemistry between Belmondo as the small-time criminal who has killed a cop and Seberg as his American squeeze, who he is trying to persuade to skip town with him.
I first saw it when it was being wheeled out for its 30th anniversary and was completely won over by it. Watching it again though, it just didn't grab me, which I wasn't expecting. It was still good to see all the classics moments - the lights coming on along the Champs-Elysses, the moments when the leads speak straight to camera, Jean Seberg with her stripy top and pixie hair crying "New York Herald Tribune" as if she was in the coolest M&S advert ever. But overall, it just didn't do it for me anymore.
Spoilers – at the end Seberg decides to turn Michel into the police, presumably because she realised that Belmondo's strutting street hoodlum posturing was already old hat. And she's right, what's the point of making an innovative revolutionary film if people are just going to cling onto it with a stultifying reverence. It was a marvellous breakthrough, it's still charming, but let it go.
