Breathless (À bout de souffle) (1960) blog by Fanny

Breathless (À bout de souffle) (1960)

Breathless is a French New Wave crime drama film which also known as À bout de souffle in French that means "out of breath". It is the first feature-length work directed and written by Jean-Luc Godard about a wandering criminal which acted by Jean-Paul Belmondo and his girlfriend which acted by Jean Seberg who is a American. This film is challenging and breaking the traditional rules for films.

French New Wave which also known as La Nouvelle Vague in French is a film movement that developed by Jean-Luc Godard  in 1959. Before 1950s and 1960s, literary adaptations was the main of French films, it usually filmed within studio system or on big budget and international co-productions. But French New Wave was produced in low budget and independent which breaks the traditional culture. It did not emphasis in visual aesthetics and mise-en-scene, elliptical or jump cuts in uncertain way is highly used in this film movement. Direct sound such as external noise and available light are used in this type of film due to they do not want to emphasis in external lighting, long takes and handheld cameras are used in this movement. They even using improvised plot and dialogue for their actors. The characters are usually marginalized, young anti-heroes and loners, with no family ties. In addition, women were given strong parts that didn't conform or archetypal roles roles seen in Hollywood. Actors encouraged to improvise dialogues and talk over each other's lines to reflect real-life conversations.

Breathless (À bout de souffle) (1960) is talking about a guy who is a thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. He persuade his American girlfriend to run away with him to Italy.

Breathless (À bout de souffle) (1960)

Breathless (1960) is a typically French New Wave film due to it was breaking the traditional rules or culture that practiced by Hollywood which is the main character is a anti-hero that murdered a policeman and stole lot of stuffs and money, not respect to female which he pull up his girl friend's dress in public, and also his girlfriend was set up with the characteristic of independent 20 aged young girl who do whatever that she like such as smoking, helping his boyfriend from criminal, having sex with him and others. Their was not given script or dialogue which is the characteristic of the movement. Besides that, this film was filmed without external lighting, they directly used the available light source from the sunshine through the window of the apartment, very dark light source in cinema, lift and others. Uncertain jump cuts was applied in film in the scene at the beginning of the film cut to the road while the main character is driving, and also when the main character is complimenting the girl and others. In addition, there is lack of rules of third which director or cameraman keep filming the characters in the center. In the end of the film, his girlfriend had break the fourth wall which is talking to the audience with the dialogue of "What is louses?" while touching her lips that same as the character of film noir.

Breathless (À bout de souffle) (1960)

In conclusion, Breathless (À bout de souffle) (1960) had attracted over 2 million viewers in that time due to it breaks the traditional film and created new things in the world.

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Reference:

Ebert, R. (2003, July 20). Great Movie - Breathless. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from RogerEber: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-breathless-1960