Breathless (1960)
La Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, was a movement inspired in part by the Italian New Wave, favoring filmic realism and resisting traditional conservative cinematic form. With his first significant feature film, À Bout de Souffle - literally, “out of breath” or “breathless,” Jean-Luc Godard helped launch the French New Wave, along with Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958) and Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959). All three directors have small parts in Breathless.
The story is simple. Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is an ego-driven thug who kills a police officer and then tries to convince his American girlfriend, Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg), an aspiring journalist, to escape to Italy with him.
Although integral to the New Wave movement, the devices Godard employs - jump cuts, long shots, hand-held camera work, muted plot and character development, etc. - are distracting. The style is meant to bring attention to itself and shock the viewer out of conditioned processes of thought, however, the techniques tend to overshadow the content and take away from the overall experience of the film.
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Grading
- Story B
- Acting B
- Visuals B+
- Originality/Innovation B+
- Enjoyability B+
- Overall B+
- DVD Extras C-
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