À bout de souffle (1960)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

À bout de souffle (1960) – J.-L. Godard

I just read that the famous “jump cuts” that this film introduced were the result of Godard needing to trim the film’s length but not wanting to remove any scenes.  I don’t think I knew that before – and what a major change to cinema because they don’t even seem novel anymore (60 years later).  Breathless is, of course, one of the major statements of the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) along with films by Truffaut, Chabrol, Varda, Resnais, Rohmer, and Rivette, which reinvented the language of cinema for a new generation.  Godard used natural lighting, location shooting, a jazzy score, partially improvised dialogue, a very loose plot, and those jump cuts to create an homage of sorts to the gangster films of his youth.  Jean-Pierre Melville (himself an auteur of the gangster film) has an extended cameo where he pontificates about gender relations.  Indeed, although the film can be seen as a character study of Belmondo’s Michel Poiccard and his actions (pursuing a relationship with Jean Seberg) after impulsively killing a motorcycle cop, it also offers up some philosophizing – however, it is nothing like what Godard would insert into his films in the future (even now as he continues into his 80s).  In fact, À bout de souffle is rather lightweight in the context of the filmmaker’s oeuvre but that also accounts for its wider popular acclaim.  It’s breezy and easy, with a beautiful eye for Paris (courtesy of Raoul Coutard) and a quick jump into the future of film.