Breathless Review
A loving pastiche of film noir yet an exuberant slap in the face of Hollywood convention, A bout de souffle is a movie landmark that wowed early 1960s audiences with its ultra-cool swagger, amoral outlook, and energetic style. Adopting a loose and shaggy narrative structure, the film follows Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a two-bit thug who models himself on Humphrey_Bogart, steals from unsuspecting lovers, and, like the protagonist in Albert Camus's -The Stranger, kills for no apparent reason, as he chases after debts, commits larceny, and tries to bed Patricia (Jean_Seberg). Shot with hand-held cameras in natural light, the film has the gritty, documentary-like feel of such Italian Neo-Realist classics as The_Bicycle_Thief and Rome_Open_City, yet its visual style also breaks every cinematic rule in the book: characters and extras stare directly into the camera, edits occur in mid-shot, and the camera seems willfully restless. In the process, director Jean-Luc Godard gleefully breaks the illusion of reality, always reminding the audience that it is watching a movie. Ever the film buff, Godard packs this film with allusions drawn equally from American pop culture and high art: Nicholas_Ray is referenced alongside Dylan_Thomas, a 1956 Thunderbird Coupe alongside William_Faulkner's -Wild Palms. Godard's iconoclastic style, coupled with his constant referencing, might give the impression that the film is a vast inside joke, were it not tempered with a deep existential pathos for its characters. During the famous bedroom sequence, we witness Michel and Patricia, two thoroughly unlikable figures, try and ultimately fail to forge some sort of bond; they are too involved in their worlds to connect. François_Truffaut once remarked, "There is the cinema before Godard and the cinema after Godard." A bout de souffle is the masterpiece that launched Godard's career and, in so doing, changed the face of cinema. Jonathan Crow, Rovi
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