Together with Francois Truffaut's '400 blows', Jean Luc Godard's A bout de souffle, is considered the defining film of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague).
A brief French New Wave lesson
''The French nouvelle vague, or “New Wave,” is widely regarded as one of the most influential movements ever to take place in cinema. The effects of the New Wave have been felt since it’s birth as a movement and long after it faded away. The new wave was spearheaded by a small group of critics who wrote for Cahiers du Cinema, a French film journal. It was a motion against the traditional French cinema, which was more literature than cinema. The French new wave gave birth to such ideas as “la politique des auteur,” jump cuts and the unimportance of linear structure.
Other innovations in new wave cinema included a large use of close ups and a lack of establishing shots. The filmmakers weren’t as concerned about establishing spatial and contextual relationships as they were about the mise-en-scene. A viewer was supposed to feel the setting, not necessarily see it.'
more : http://www.theblackandblue.com/2010/03/29/the-french-new-wave-a-cinematic-revolution/ )
BREATHLESS ANALYSIS
Plotline:
The story of Breathless is a simple one. Michael Poiccard (Jean Paul Belmondo) is a small time hood who steals a car in Marseille so that he could drive to Paris and find American beauty Patricia Franchini, the woman with whom he has had a brief affair and whom he loves. On the journey, however, he kills a policeman. Arriving in Paris a hunted man, Poiccard quickly finds Patricia, and attempts to persuade her to leave with him for Rome. Uncertain of whether she loves him, Patricia procrastinates while the net tightness..
So, the plot reads almost like a thriller from the 1940's- a criminal is on the run from the police, he's in love with a beautiful woman, and eventually someone dies.
a.k.a - he took a man, a woman and a gun. Nothing new, right?
But here aesthetics, production modes and storytelling methods are the key.
He wanted, like the rest of his french new wave colleagues, to transform the way movies were seen. In fact, most of the directors of the new wave movement felt that style was more important than the narrative.
Godard injects US pop culture into the heart of Paris. Poiccard models himself on Humphrey Bogart, very literally, and he even adopts the mannerism of the drawing his thumb across his lip as Bogart did in 'The Harder They Fall'.
Throughout the movie, we never know how much of the real Poiccard we are seeing and how much the image,
reality is blurred.
Patricia is, like Poiccard an aimless character- although emotionally, rather than morally.
She is unsure of her love for Poiccard and that leaves the viewer with the impression that, if their relationship will end, she would move on without regret. For all Poiccard's absurd poisture, he is the weaker partner in the relationship, and so the one that will suffer most when it collapses.
But with Godard, the plotline is not so important it's the atmosphere around characters.
Some of the key ideas of existentialism, such as stressing the individual’s importance over society’s rules and the evident absurdity of life, lie at the core of the narrative. Death is an everyday event and generally treated with indifference, and love is impossible.
The whole film was shot on a hand-held camera, style that is often in movies of French New Wave, but this movie was
shot by just two people (Rouald and Godard), on a budget that was below 50.000$. It was shot completely on location in Paris in daylight, because it was cheaper and because Godard detested lighting, he wanted a more real and bold film.
''À bout de souffle began in this way. I had written the first scene (Jean Seberg on the Champs Elysees) and for the rest I had a pile of notes for each scene. I said to myself, this is terrible, I stopped everything. Then I thought: in a single day… one should be able to complete about a dozen takes. Only instead of planning ahead I shall invent at the last minute!'' (Jean Luc Godard)