Screening Journal Breathless, Essay Example

How would you describe the camera style (shots and movement) that Goddard used in Breathless?

Goddard’s camera work is at once elegantly cinematic and seemingly conscientiously rough around the edges. All of the shots are beautifully framed and always in conversation with the action of the narrative.  A particularly clever example of this is during the scene where Patricia is leaving Michel to call a cab, and reaches into her purse seemingly to retrieve money for the fare.  As Patricia has her hand in her purse, Godard shifts to a high angle shot revealing to the audience that she is not reaching for her wallet, but for the police inspector’s phone number.) However, Goddard makes deliberate choices that make the shots feel amateurish.  The entire movie appears to be shot freehand, with slight movements of the camera even during static shots (like the particularly long shot of the movie poster outside the theater.)  The editing is probably the most stylistically striking aspect of the cinematography.  The jump shots Goddard frequently employs throughout the film lend it a sometimes frantic, fast-paced feel.

The film is full of literary and artistic references from very high and very low sources (Movies, painting poetry, novels, music philosophy and popular culture).  See if you can recognize and identify some of them.

References abound in Breathless, particularly in the scene where Michel and Patricia are in her apartment.  There are prints by Peter Klee and Picasso on the wall in the bedroom (Renoir is relegated to the bathroom), while Beethoven plays on the record player.  Patricia reads Michel some Faulkner, Michel references war hero, Lafayette and actor, Maurice Chevalier.  When Michel tells Patricia he would choose grief over nothing, or when Parvulesco tells Patricia that his life’s ambition is, “to be immortal and then to die,” one wonders if this isn’t a nod to Sartre.

After seeing the film, what are your feelings about the principal characters, Michel and Patricia? Do you like them or care about them.  Do you identify with them?  How do you think Godard wants you to feel about them?

I do not feel particularly strongly for Michel and Patricia nor do I identify with them; I think this is exactly what Godard wants us to feel.  The acting is a bit wooden and stilted and realism is sometimes sacrificed for style (the thumb-swiping-across-the-lips Bogart reference definitely comes off as staged).  But I do not think this is a failure. Breathless is very much about characters and acting; Michel is acting out a role in front of Patricia and Patricia is doing the same for Michel.  Godard seems to be calling attention to this throughout the movie, even down to how he conveys the characters of Michel and Patricia to the audience.

The film was revolutionary at the time and its influence is still felt. Today.  Does some of that feeling of excitement and discovery come through to you some 50 years later?

It does.  While the stylistic decisions Godard made are no longer revolutionary (only because his revolutionary decisions have now been popularly adopted and made commonplace), there is a feeling of freshness and youth throughout the film.  Breathless, at times, feels like less of a film that tells a story and more of a film that tells of the filmmaker’s love of the stories he finds in movies, art, literature and pop culture.  The freehand shooting and jumps shots also lend to the freshness of the film.

Describe some of the things about the film that impressed you or surprised you the most.

The shooting and editing are obviously wonderful, but I think that some of the most delightful and impressive parts of the film are in the writing, particularly in the word play.  I love the last scene, when Michel says “it is truly disgusting [or, it is a scumbag] [c’estvraimentdégueulasse], ”and after Patricia asks the officer what Michel said, the officer offers up the mistranslation, “you are disgusting [or, you are a scumbag] [Vousêtesvraimentunedégueulasse].”  That bit of dialogue struck me because it was such a delicate and subtle ending that perfectly sums up so many of the themes in a film that at other times is wont to come across as heavy handed (mistranslation/misrepresentation seems to be a huge part of the film.  Michel is constantly missing his Italian friend, Patricia is constantly missing Michel’s meaning, they are both constantly misrepresenting themselves to one another).