Breathless (A Bout De Souffle)

I prefer the Jim McBride remake. As innovative as Godard's film may be, there's nothing in it as purely entertaining as Richard Gere's performance, or the scene where he argues Silver Surfer with a little kid at a newspaper stand. Watch that and ask yourself which BREATHLESS was more of an influence on Tarantino.

What in Sam Hill are you going on about?

Tarantino's flat out said the McBride version influenced him heavily. No mysteries there.

This was my first Godard film, as well as my first film from the wave (appropriate start, no?). I'll admit upon first viewing I wasn't that impressed, but upon further viewings I've just come to adore it. Jean-Paul Belmondo's performance is nuanced yet charismatic, and it really is just a good story.

I've always found that for Breathless, Godard was just experimenting more with the technical aspects of cinema, and it wouldn't be until Une femme est une femme that he would make a movie that featured likable characters. Watching other movies that have led to the Nouvelle Vague movement (Bob le flambeur, Ascenseur à l'échafaud), you get a real appreciation for Godard's ability to grab the elements that made those movies unique at the time, and just crank it up a few notches. The editing is really fantastic in Breathless, and the camera work is great too, but the whole time, it feels like you are watching an experimental film, as opposed to a really solid one. There's certainly a story in this movie, and Godard tries to stick to it, rather than abandon it, and mock it, like in Bande à part, which is a much better movie than Breathless.

Roger Ebert often mentions that he feels that there are three movies that have completely changed the face of cinema, Birth of a Nation, Citizen Kane, and Breathless, and I always enjoy thinking of this idea when picturing the progression of cinema. Sure, Breathless didn't create most of the ideas or elements of the Nouvelle Vague, but it certainly took all the ideas that came before it, put it into one package, and gave the movement an image and leader.

I can't picture most people really understanding this film's importance.

Saw this last night in a gorgeous restored print. I'd never seen it before, and I agree with some of what's been said about the film's influence. What was striking to me was that this felt like a film that could have been made today. It's a film that I found myself moved and struck by throughout, and it only gets better the more I think about it.

Favorite moment might be the scenes in the apartment where the camera follows Michel and the girl around the apartment in what feels like a never ending circle. Or the bit where the girl is walking up the elevator and it's all lit up. I loved that. I loved all of it.

One thing, though -- I've read that the original translation had the last lines being "you are such a bitch." The translation I saw said "you make me want to puke." According to wikipedia, the latter is a more accurate translation, but I feel like the former fits Michel's personality more. But I guess there's debate about whether he's even referring to the girl at all. Thoughts?

I'm not a linguist or anything, but thinking about the three languages I know (portuguese, german, english), I'd definitley say there's differences of tone, wordplay, etc. that will get lost in subtitling (this is without even getting into stuff like regional accents and untranslateable slang.) It's why humor, as a rule, tends not to travel. Have you seen Fassbinder's Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant? For me it's a great example of distance in dialogue; the movie is ALL ABOUT the main character's tone, the words she chooses to express herself, the way she creates a distance towards everything she says. Completley untranslateable, imo, but I've come across plenty non-german speakers who like the movie.

I do agree that the french have a certain love for wordplay; I don't know the language well enough to spot these things in movies, which I only watch subtitled, but I do come across a lot of puns and such in french comics, books and song lyrics. [ı]A Bout De Suffle[/i] feels like a weird movie to have this problem with, though - one of the stars is earthy old Jean Paul Belmondo (who is funny mostly because he's NOT being clever and wordplayish - he's being a brash young hedonist who could give a fuck about subtetly, it's all about pretending you're Bogart and slapping asses) and the other is non native french speaker Jean Seberg. But at the end of the day, you know, who knows how much wordplay there is in arabic, or polish, or cantonese? As soon as I pop in a foreign movie I always assume that I'll be missing out on 50% of what it's trying to tell me, but hey, until the arrival of our esperanto overlords it's what we have.

Godard doesn't really care much about narrative, true. But I don't think it's fair to look at A Bout De Suffle as being only about the formal aspects of cinema, either - he does have themes. I think in many ways it's an extremley young, naive movie - it's about all the old Hollywood macho touchstones, about the freedom of running wild, about how beautiful Paris is/was at that time. And about Jean Seberg's ass. So I don't think it's all cerebral, I get plenty of emotional impact from it (and a lot more still from Pierrot Le Fou, which to me is A Bout De Suffle remade with angry ennui in vibrant colours replacing the black & white wistfulness.)

(I do realise both of the points I?m arguing here - language and emotional impact- are deeply, deeply subjective, even within a topic like cinema that's already going to be subjective from the get-go; hope this post doesn't seem to much like "no, you should have MY opinion".)

Godard is an artist I have all the respect in the world for but I've always felt oddly distanced from his film. That may be the point . When it comes to the new wave I've always been more of a fan of Truffaut, Rohmer and even Resnais. Truffaut always seemed to have more humanity in his films while Godard was always more intellectual.

Like I said, I've always respected Godard but I've never been able to fully give myself over to him. The one exemption to this is Contempt but that's because I feel like I fell for Godard's little trick. Contempt almost always seemed to me to be Godard's take or "satire" (satire may not be the right word here but I can't think of anything else) of Hollywood filmmaking. Now Godard being a critic did champion a lot of Hollywood filmmakers such as Hawks and Ford, but at the same time Contempt seemed to be a commentary on them. However, maybe because I'm so accustomed to this style of filmmaking, I've always kind of loved Contempt on a surface level.

Andrew, Godard is very distanced overall, but I think Breathless is kind of an exception to this - Belmondo's boisterousness and Seberg's sexy melancholy really endear their characters to you imo. But have you seen Pieerot Le Fou? That one I find even less distanced than A Bout De Suffle - it feels very personal, like you could totally imagine that party at the begining being a riff on events Godard had to attend. Oh, and Bande A Part also, which is very tongue in cheek but also breezy and somehwat uncynical about its characters.