On A List of Movie Reviews
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À bout de souffle (1960)
Rate:
10
Viewed:
9/15, 5/20
9/15:
Enormously influential, Jean-Luc Godard's first major motion picture À bout de souffle, which is
better known as Breathless, isn't anything special.
Mostly, what I see is the avant-garde editing (aka jump cuts). There's a nice scene of Jean-Paul Belmondo and
Jean Seberg walking on the streets of Paris while the others are surprised to see them. Not much of a plot occurs.
The continually-improvised script is evident during many conversations with the bedroom scene dragging
out for a long while.
Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a highly engaging character who might be the biggest chain-smoker ever, but he's the
loser type who can't stop touching his lips in a strange way. A pretty face with an iconic haircut that came way,
way before Mia Farrow, Jean Seberg isn't interesting enough to care about. Her character is one-dimensional, but
she makes for eye candy by hanging around Jean-Paul Belmondo. Sadly, life left Jean Seberg literally breathless
as she committed suicide at age 40.
All in all, the hype of À bout de souffle, a prime example of the French New Wave, may have been built up
too much for me, so I'll have to view it again later.
5/20:
One of the greatest films in French cinema, À bout de souffle immortalized Jean-Paul Belmondo and
Jean Seberg forever.
The first time I saw it, I didn't have a strong favorable opinion, and now, I begin to see why it's a remarkable
motion picture. Yes, the jump cuts are famous and many classic scenes are seemingly improvisational, but there's
a James Dean quality that's exercised by Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg: infinite flexibility. It doesn't
happen much in films.
Actors have a limited space to move around in because they work with marks on the ground. It's easy to tell
they've rehearsed the scene plenty of times, but in À bout de souffle, the rules of movement are thrown
out of the window. On the other hand, the dialogue somewhat sucks, yet Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg look
so cool that they're beyond fault. Hence, it's a timeless movie.
What's interesting about Michel is he, who's although a pathological liar, an inveterate chain-smoker, and a
cop killer with ADHD tendencies, seems perfectly at ease. Now, that's what I call a sociopath. Living in the
fast lane, he was bound to die sooner or later. Of course, Jean Seberg's character is totally attracted to his
bad boy persona. By the way, the writer who's interviewed is Jean-Pierre Melville, the director of
Le samouraï and L'armée des ombres.
All in all, À bout de souffle is as fresh and new as it was in 1960.