À Bout de Souffle (aka Breathless)
                                                                                                             A Flim by Jean-Luc Godard
                                                   
                                                The Cinema of Ideas                

                                                        

                                       "I think as soon as people see something a little unusual on the screen they
                                         try too hard to understand.  They understand perfectly well, really, but they
                                         want to understand even more. If you show someone drinking tea or saying
                                         goodbye, they immediately say yes, but why is he drinking tea?...If you see a
                                         bouquet of flowers on the table, does it mean something? It doesn't prove
                                         anything about anything."            
                                                                                                         Jean-Luc Godard (1962)

Jean-Luc Godard:  Born in 1930 in Paris, he was educated in Switzerland.  Always interested in film, Godard started a film journal with fellow enthusiasts Francois Truffaut and Jaques Rivette at age 20.  After writing film criticism in the journal for a period of time, he began to make his own films.  In 1959, he directed his first feature film: Breathless.  He recieved great critical acclaim and became the most prominant of a group of filmmakers called the French New Wave (which included Truffaut and Rivette).  Godard's directorial style was conciously different from any that had been seen before, and he continued to make films throughout his life.  Still creating today, Godard's latest film (2001), In Praise of Love,  embraces the digital video revolution, showing his continued devotion to stylistic innovation.
                                                                    
                                     
                      
                                                                                                


                                                              Godard's Breathless: Style Over Content

In Breathless, Godard never presents a flowing narrative in which a viewer could become transfixed.  Instead of the seamless editing characteristic of Hollywood Classicism, he favors a style that calls attention to itself.  The fragmented style encourages all focus centered on ideas, allowing the film to maximize its thought provoking capabilities.  Godard emphasizes four main stylistc techniques to achieve his aim:

                                                                                     1) Jump Cuts
                                                                                     2) Intertexts
                                                                                     3) Camera Work
                                                                                     4) Direct Address


                                                              

                                                                  







                                                                      Jump Cuts

• Jumps cuts occur when a continuous movement is cut into so that continuity itself is replaced by rapid changes in a scene.

• In Breathless, the image is continually replaced, and the viewer is jolted out of the story and into confusion.  Godard uses the confusion to force attention onto the current event of the film -- the idea.  He shakes away the past in a flurry of cuts.
  

• For example, as the main charatcers (Michel and Patricia) drive in a stolen car, Michel declares his love for Patricia through 11 jump cuts.  Through the harsh cuts, Michel's proclaimed love is the only idea in the foreground and nothing can be contemplated except the present.

• The jump cuts also express Michel and Patricia's inability to connect as they always seem to be cut off.  Their individual ideas appear cut off from each other.

• Michael and Patricia can never understand each other because Godard's style will not allow them to.  Godard sacrificed the happiness of his characters to present ideas in the most thought provoking manner.
  

                                                                                             





                                                   Intertexts

• Godard uses intertexts in Breathless to weave both pop culture and high art references into the stream of contemplation.

• For example, if a person is intimately familiar with Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, then Michel and Patricia's interactions while it is playing may be especially meaningful.  Also, for people not educated about the work of Mozart, the complex existentialist ideas of Breathless may be more accessible if shown in relationship to a popular American song.

• Godard uses the assumption that more productive, analytical thoughts are created when an audience comes from a basis of understanding.

• The most relevant intertext in the film is that of film noir because they share an emphasis on style.
  

• Intertext imparts a flood of previously held ideas concerning the characteristics of film noir.  Maybe more significantly, film noir always appears to value style over story and may even be called simply a style itself.
  

                                                                                                         





                                         

                                                                                                      Camera Work

• The camera work in Breathless is astoundingly shaky; it looks as if much of the movie is shot using a handheld camera.  It shakes, bounces, and never allows any sort of visual comfort.

• The film is presented in a documentary manner as it never allows any distraction from the current presentation of ideas.
  

• In a scene where Michel and Patricia are walking down the street, there are people walking in front of the camera, and the pair is often shoved to one side of the shot.  The camera itself is swaying and bouncing as if some person is walking with it.

• Instead of a love story, the documentary style of camera work focuses attention on subject matter.  Philosophical musings are accompanied only by style as Godard consciously demands thought.

                                                                          



                                                                                              Direct Address

• Michel and Patricia both directly address the camera in two shocking instances, chiding the viewer into contemplation.

• Michel looks into the camera and suggests to the viewer "you go hang yourself."  Patricia stares coldly at the viewer while standing over Michel's dead body.
  

• Since Godard's cinema deals with ideas, there is little harm in placing the viewer within the discourse of the film.  The presentation and reception of ideas takes precedence over any tendencies toward continuity of story.

                                                                                                   




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