À Bout De Souffle
(Breathless)
1959
Start of Breathless – End of Cinema. Infinity has been written about the film and any further writing on the film is just a formality – a formality that every film buff must perform. At a time when Alain Resnais had made the intense drama Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) and when Truffaut was riding high on the success of The 400 Blows (1959), fellow Cahiers du Cinéma critic Jean-Luc Godard hit the filmmaking world with Breathless.
Breathless (1959)
The story is as simple as it gets, which is perfect for Godard’s loosely but meticulously constructed style. A man on the run, a woman on the road, a kiss before death. It is near impossible to tell anything about the film without romanticizing it. Godard’s love for cinema shows in every moment of the film as he places charming cameos of fellow New Wave filmmakers here and there. Jean-Paul Belmondo is an instant hit with his Bogart-loving borderline-misogynistic attitude and it is no surprise that he went on to become one of the most famous French actors ever. And poor Coutard’s groundbreaking techniques are overloaded to the point of nausea nowadays. And Godard’s own contribution lies in his avoidance of being analyzed by traditional methods of film criticism as he reconstructs film grammar using the alphabets created by his own predecessors. No wonder he said retorted “Yes, A film must have a starting middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order”. He, in effect, disorients traditionally trained minds by speaking in a commonplace oral language, but in an entirely different cinematic one.
I wouldn’t hesitate to say that Breathless is the coolest thing that ever happened to cinema. And most wouldn’t deny. But that isn’t what it is all about. It revolutionized the way movies were made and more importantly, the way movies were watched. Things that we now take for granted in films – the outdoor shoot, the jump cuts (incidentally begot by a runtime crisis), the fluidity of narrative and the hand held camera work – show their roots in Breathless. No one makes movies like them any more and any close attempts seem like nothing more than cheeky use of camera and scissors. To plagiarize a quote on The Lord of the Rings book, “The movie-watching world is divided into two – ones that have seen Breathless and the ones yet to see them.”
The Seventh Art 
December 1, 2008 at 10:21 pm
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Wednesday, we shot a scene in direct sunlight with Geva 36. Everyone found it awful. I find it fairy extraordinary. It is the first time that one obliges the film stock to give the maximum of itself by making it do that for which it is not made. It is as if it were suffering by being exploited to the outer limit of its possibilities. Even the film stock, you see, will be out of breath.
Godard.
Start of Breathless – End of Cinema. Infinity has been written about the film and any further writing on the film is just a formality – a formality that every film buff must perform
Right on, Srikanth. Talking about the same thing would be a Breathless cliché. Yet, I think, the film is fascinating it’s not wrong to compare the development of the film and Godard’s methodology to action painting. Godard in one his interviews said that while he was writing and shooting Breathless he thought he was making a realistic film but when he looks back at the film now it looks closer to Alice in Wonderland. Breathless was the first movie made by a cinephile and Godard pays tribute at every corner in the film to his own roots of cinephilia (film love) and criticism (analogical thinking and quotes). For eg: The room in which Serberg and Belmondo spend chatting away was used because Melivlle lived in that lane. Perhaps, Godard also realized that Nicolas De Stael(a painter he admired) had once lived nearby. There plenty more quotes, reference some used as a very dialectical method, that gave rise to certain meaning or contradiction, while others were hidden like Easter eggs. This reference to his own roots of film-love has continued till today. Let me share few anecdotes regarding the film rather than writing about quotes, references and technique:-
-Georges De Beauregard was in a deep shit before this film and could barely scrape in the money needed to make this film. He agreed to do so because Godard offered to shoot the film in a very less amount and time, and Charbol promised to serve as the Technical director and even Truffaut gave his assurance. Godard got in touch with Beauregard through Pierre Barunberger (he along with Georges De Beauregard were two of the greatest producers in the world and whose contribution to cinema cannot be ignored. Barunberger was with one of his film at 20th century fox office, when Godard told him on his face that the film he came with was a-shit. Barunderger went on to produce one of his short and introduced him to Georges De Beaurgard. And it was Beaurgard who introduced Godard to his longtime cinematographer Coutard, whose experience in war photography came handy in this movie.
-Truffaut had narrated him the treatment of the film that was based on a real-life incident, Godard although used Truffaut skeleton but left out everything within the scenario. Godard very well knew that the Press was important (having worked in the Publicity Dept, at 20th Century fox) so he had got a journalists to report on the shooting of the entire film. So Godard and his methods of shooting were already getting publicity even before the film was released in France. Beside, Truffaut’s fame as a critic also came in handy where in his interviews he praised the movie even before its release.
-Godard shooting style made everyone realize that this would be his last film, and no one had any faith in the film. They all felt that this was headed for a disaster. Belmondo just played along and realized he would be getting back to boxing and Serberg even tried quitting.
Georges Be Beauregard and Godard almost broke into a tussle because Godard more than shooting would be thinking.
Godard hired Serberg because he liked her in Perminger, Bonjour Tristesse. In her first meeting with the director she was unimpressed by him, describing him.
“As an incredibly introverted messy-looking young man with glasses, who dint look (her) in the eyes when he talked” quote from Brody’s book on Godard.
– Godard made sure every person of the Technical crew was away from the film. The script supervisor never did any continuity; Charbol never did anything as a Technical director. The first cut was two and a half hour long, and it was on Melville’s advice Godard invented his famous jump-cut.
Godard wanted to make his first film when he was 25, but it took his five more years before his dreams could be fulfilled. It was his ten long year as a critic that seriously gave rise to his filmmaking abilities and expansion of his ideas and further development of his aesthetics along with his contemporaries.
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December 1, 2008 at 11:23 pm
“Godard shooting style made everyone realize that this would be his last film, and no one had any faith in the film. They all felt that this was headed for a disaster. Belmondo just played along and realized he would be getting back to boxing and Serberg even tried quitting.
Georges Be Beauregard and Godard almost broke into a tussle because Godard more than shooting would be thinking. ”
Too hilarious. Could make a film by itself.
Impressive anecdotes, so unheard of. Thanks for taking up time to put this up. This is the kind of info I looked to get when I started the series. I guess the series is going to pay me off immensely.
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December 2, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Great start to a wonderful series. I too am an unabashed admirer of the movie. It certainly revolutionized the way people viewed this form of art.
Satyajit Ray, in his book Our Films Their Films, devoted an entire chapter on Godard in general and Breathless in particular, such was its influence on Ray.
The fact that Godard as well as his fellow Cashiers Du Cinema and Nouvelle Vague comrade-in-arm Truffaut were huge lovers of film noirs, gangster movies and American B-movies (all distinctive American genres), clearly showed here as well as in Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, another great masterpiece.
Truffaut summed it up best when he aptly stated that there’s cinema before Breathless, and there’s cinema after Breathless (something of that order, though maybe not verbatim). Coming from a fellow participant of the legendary movement and one of the masters of the world of cinema, the statement cannot be equated with just another token of appreciation.
Great job bro… keep up the Godardian spirit!!!
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December 2, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Hi Shubhajit,
Thanks for visiting. “Our films their films” is so elusive a book for me and I’m determined to get it by this year. Let’s see.
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December 7, 2008 at 6:16 pm
[…] proves that Breathless was not a fluke with his next film Band of Outsiders (1964). Band of Outsiders was the first Godard […]
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December 10, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Awesome initiative. Look forward to reading most of these wonderfully written articles
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December 10, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Hi Ankur, Thanks for reading…
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December 10, 2008 at 6:47 pm
[…] Le Fou is perhaps Godard’s most loved film after Breathless and it isn’t a coincidence that the films are often placed on the same platform for […]
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December 20, 2008 at 6:25 pm
[…] second commercial success comes 25 years after the triumph of Breathless. Every Man for himself is considered the starting film of the next phase in Godard’s prolific […]
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December 24, 2008 at 6:19 pm
[…] in Godard’s filmography, but I found the film to be the most iconoclastic film by Godard since Breathless (1959). Till Detective, Godard had been objecting the conventions used for representation in the […]
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