A Bout De Souffle (Breathless)

Jean-Luc Godard, France 1959, 89 minutes

Picture it: elegant French criminal Michel Poiccard steals a car and drives to Paris, while shooting at the cops in hot pursuit, just so he can find Patricia Franchini, the American girl he can’t stop thinking about. It’s so good, there almost are no words. Jean-Paul Belmondo, looking the best he ever will, Jean Seberg with a pixie haircut and capri pants to die for, and Paris in glorious black and white.

The degree to which this film has influenced the look and feel of independent and art cinema is almost impossible to discern. Even now, many filmakers would probably give their right kidney to make something that even approaches A Bout de Souffle. This film’s been called “the yardstick of cinematic cool” and it’s really true. Sure, the film is choppy, shot with an unfinished script, and (legend has it) the tracking shots were accomplished by pushing the camera in a shopping cart, but these are the ingredients that conspire to make this film the most fun art movie you’ll probably ever see.

Aside from the exquisite ways in which Belmondo and Seburg make early 1960s daywear edgy, the film captures an emotive slice of the rift between the sexes. Directors like Lina Wertmuller tried and failed to capture what it’s like when old world machismo rubs up against emancipated womanhood, but Goddard does it perfectly. In the bedroom scenes between Michel and Patricia, there’s a blend of camaraderie and insouciance underscored by loneliness and self-protection that lets A Bout de Souffle transcend the years with much more than just it’s fashion forwardness intact.

Review by Sarah Artt
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2003

The story begins in Marseilles. Michel Poicard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a young hoodlum, steals a car to go to Paris. He is pursued by a policeman on a motorcycle, whom he shoots dead with a gun he finds in the glove compartment. In Paris, Michel steals money from a friend to go off and find Patricia (Jean Seberg), an American girl who sells the Herald Tribune in the Champs-Elysées. He is in love with her and wants to take her to Rome. This film gave Belmondo his first big role and Jean Seberg is exquisite under Godard's direction.

A Bout de Souffle, shot with bits and scraps of film on a very low budget, was the first official manifestation of the nouvelle vague, a style of cinema that emerged in France, in the period and was heavily inspired by what was being done in America. Godard threw away the rigidity of French conventions by using hand-held camera techniques and natural settings, giving his film a fluidity and a spontaneity in keeping with the life and character of his protagonist. The young Michel Poicard; dashing, daring, cynical and purile, is himself immersed in American culture (sporting his role-model Bogart's hat and look). The film pays deliberate homage to the films of Preminger and other contemporary directors of the film noir genre.

The heroes banter, tell fibs and act silly. Yet the film is essentially about cowardliness, foreboding, betrayal and death on the prowl; on the difficulty of being who we pretend to be and even of knowing ourselves. In the void into which the youth of the times had fallen into, Godard could see only love to save them.

The love intrigue set aside, this is a great film about Paris and the spirit that reigned there at the time.

Review by Katia Saint-Peron
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98

One of the landmarks of the Nouvelle Vague and the film which established Godard as one of the most influential directors of all time. Archetypal road-movie as it is, it features the rebellious Jean-Paul Belmondo as Michel, a car thief who kills a cop and then runs away with his American girlfriend (Jean Seberg).

Godard's great innovation lies in the identification of the title to the camerawork and aesthetics of the film. With fast editing and unresolved camera movements, Godard disseminated the very essence of his hero's lifestyle which wa no other than living fast and for the moment and pushing everything to the limits! The glorification of life as an end to itself is epitomised by slogans we see on wall such as: "To Live Dangerously Till the End".

The influence of the American gangster movies is evident in A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) and the fact that Godard dedicated the film to B-movie studio Monogram Pictures, comes as no surprise. There is an unmatched freshness in the acting by both Belmondo and Seberg, while Godard mixes skilfully jazz with classical music in what is a film a guaranteed humour and insight.

Review by Spiros Gangas
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94