Breathless

Of all the pioneering, innovative and influential French films that were released in the late 50s, there were two, above all others, that have undoubtedly come to embody The New Wave and a shift in cinema, on an international scale: François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless.

Their impact has been acknowledged and written about extensively, with Godard’s film in particular inspiring continual homage, referencing and a remake.
It may be easy to feel as though you know the film inside out already, given the surrounding hype, but upon review the film repeatedly offers up new lines of thought, experience and entertainment.

The plot is simple: Jean-Paul Belmondo, in a star-making performance, plays Michel Piocard, an amoral outlaw on the run after killing a policeman. In Paris he reunites with Patricia, played by the iconic Jean Seberg, an American who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-Elysées. However, their idyllic time together will inevitably run out as the police continue their pursuit of the criminal.

With this homage to the crime thriller (look out for references to Melville’s Bob le flambeur and Humphrey Bogart), Godard creates a film concerned with the history of and influences upon its own medium. Allusions to other films, books, music and art abound. However, the director updates these to a modernist context, where the means and existence of cinema form as significant part of the subject matter as the narrative itself.

Fifty years on, the innovative camera, editing and sound techniques remain as exciting today in a film that will challenge and take the viewer on a breathtaking cinematic journey.

In addition to all of this, one cannot deny Seberg’s dazzling chic and Belmondo’s unrelenting cool, which continually oozes throughout a film that has become the ultimate icon of cinematic (and a city’s) stylishness.