New Year's Countdown...of Excellence: 6 - Breathless (1960's selection)

 6
Breathless
1960, d. Jean-Luc Godard- Criterion Channel

The Story (in two paragraphs or less)

Michel is a real shitheel of a person.  He's a Bogart-obsessed, chain-smoking,  womanizer, misogynist, a car thief, an aggressive driver, a backseat driver (merde!), and, quite early in the film, a cop killer after he shoots a highway patrolman.  On top of it all, he's broke, constantly hitting up the women he knows to borrow/steal money. But, Michel is also a romantic, I guess, in that he's in love with an American woman, Patricia, working for a New York newspaper in Paris (she's a reporter, but also peddles the paper on the streets?).

The movie, for the most. part follows the two of them over a two-day span as Michel ducks the police and tries to collect money he's owed while convincing Patricia to sleep with him again/that he's in love with her (there's kind of equal importance Michel puts into the two arguments).  Reports in the newspapers start posting his picture, the walls are closing in.  How will Patricia act when she finds out?  Does she love him enough to run away with him, or will she turn him in?

What did I think I was in for?
I seriously have never seen any of the French new wave cinemafilms, and I'm not sure why, except that they always seemed to me to be laborious, talky, and kind of pointless.  So I guess I was expecting that.

I was also expecting a lot of style, in the shooting, editing, and, as would be expected from the French, wardrobe, as well as plenty of attitude.

What did I get out of it?
Pretty much exactly what I expected, style over substance.  I both admire the film for its casualness, it's presentation of sexually (and seemingly emotionally) liberated French youth, but I also find it quite alien, and yet also cliche.  Michel conducts himself as if he is completely carefree, but underneath he's clearly panicked about the cops baring down on him, as well as utterly infatuated with Patricia whom he deviously tries everything from charming to negging to get her to like him.  In the end, Patricia's rejection of him wounds him to the point that he would rather die than flee.  

I can't help but think of The Third Man, where Anna loves Harry Lyme so much she can't help but tolerate his horrendous nature.  Here, it's clear Patricia is in the same position, but makes the opposite choice, understanding that loving Michel is bad for her and the only way to stop loving him is to hand him over to the cops, or force him to run.  But he will do neither.

Godard's style here, very loose camerawork with an intense amount of edits (a 20 second scene of dialogue may have up to a dozen edit points despite being the same shot) and irrational jumps between scenes that have no direct continuity or sense of the time that has passed.  The editing is more feeling than logic.  Since the story itself is so threadbare, the construction here is about mood, built out of the combination of editing, soundrack, visuals and dialogue.      

Do I think it's a classic?
Yes, clearly this does something that is so uniquely its own that it continues to resonate.  It's so keyed into the director's particular sensibility that it's impossible for someone else to replicate without seeming like a fraud.  

That said, this is exactly what I thought French new wave cinema would be and while I get the appeal, I'm not sure it appeals to me fully.  I don't know if it's the style or just the Frenchness that I didn't quite like.  I don't really have a strong desire after seeing this to dive into other films of Godard, Truffaut, et al.  The jazzy, experimentalism of the film is not unappealing, but it's not something I think I'll be actively pursuing when I want something to watch.  I kind of prefer an actual story over style most of the time.

Did I like watching this?
Comme ci comme ça.  I enjoyed it enough, as an exercise in style, and there's enough of a story to hang a fancy hat on.  But at the same time I vehemently disliked Michel when I thought the film was trying to tell me I should like him.  I found his obscene amount of smoking (and his penchant for just throwing cigarettes and matches on the floor) very, very gross.  His big, puffy, chapped lips also were a counterpoint that Goddard focuses on in his Bogart comparison, and they're very repellent to me.  There's a reputation of sexiness that French cinema has, but this never felt sexy.  Cool and aloof, sure.  Not sexy.  The kissing scenes were pretty weak, dryer than a Hallmark kiss.

My favourite moment was Michel's crime associate giving him a hard time about wearing silk socks with a tweed suit.  So French.

Would I watch it again?
If I ever do a more dedicated dive into French new-wave I might rewatch this just to see how it compares to everything else.  However, I find it highly unlikely I'll ever really do a dedicated dive into French new-wave.