Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Gee LP (A) on October 13, 2005 at 22:34:50

In Reply to: Breathless posted by warrenh@optonline.net on October 12, 2005 at 14:35:13:

Hey warrenh...yes, it was a big deal 40+ years ago. Take a look at most movies made around 1958-1960. Big, leaden, overstuffed things. I know, gross generalization, but still! There were exceptions, like Welles' "Touch of Evil", but look at what Hollywood considered a prestige picture about teenagers in 1960: "A Summer Place".

Then Godard comes along and makes "Breathless" for $90,000 or so. He makes you VERY aware you are watching a film (no "invisible" editing here!). "Breathless" is a gangster film...but it is a French dream of a gangster film. What gangster walks around in a dress shirt and boxer shorts listening to Mozart? Godard's gangster does, and Belmondo makes you believe it happens like that...at least in France.

Not since Welles had there been a filmmaker who really employed the idea of the serious film with really loopy elements (the keystone cops, the interview with the celebrity, the twenty-minute or so sequence in the bedroom) and made you so aware you were watching a "film". First Godard shook up French cinema and then American cinema (he was the first choice to direct "Bonnie and Clyde" but turned the offer down because he was told he would have to wait until summer to shoot). The heady mix of attactive young actors, pop culture, a life with no consequences...what would 60s and 70s cinema been without Godard?

Okay, so you saw it and didn't "get it." Sometimes it is hard to see what a 45-year old movie offered contemporary audiences (it doesn't help that no subtitle I've ever seen accurately states the last sentence that Belmondo says to Seberg [as Pauline Kael noted, "What he says is considerably stronger]). But if you look at movies made since "Breathless", especially in America from 1967 to 1971 (and imagine Tarantino and his friends without Godard!), you might be able to see something and recognize a tip of the hat to the old curmudgeon.

Well, after writing this, I'm ready to pull out my copy of "Breathless", pop it in the player, and hear Seberg's flat Midwestern cry: "New York Herald Tribune!"

For a couple of good essays on "Breathless", take a look at Kael's 1961 review in "I Lost It at the Movies" and Danny Peary's mid-80s write-up in "Cult Movies."

Take care and have fun!