Conventions were blown up to create something from the remains: Jean-Luc Godard on the film that changed cinema

By: Myles Burke, art critic / BBC
Translation: Telegrafi.com

Jean-Luc Godard was crystal clear about what he intended to do with his first feature film debut, Out of breath [Breathless], which premiered 65 years ago. He wanted to completely destroy the idea of ​​what cinema was. In 1964, the director told BBC journalist Olivier Todd: “It was a film that took everything cinema had done – the girls, the gangsters, the cars – and blew it all up, putting an end to the old style once and for all.”

Sophisticated and semi-improvised, Out of breath seemed revolutionary when it hit French screens on March 16, 1960. With its fragmented editing, unconventional dialogue, and free-flowing approach to the plot, it helped reshape the language of modern cinema. As the renowned American film critic Roger Ebert wrote: “No film debut since Citizen Kane [Citizen Kane] in 1942, it wasn't as influential.”

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On the surface, the subject of Out of breath resembles a classic crime thriller. It tells the story of Michel Poicar (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo), an impulsive and amoral criminal, and his complicated relationship with Patricia Francini (Jean Seberg), an American journalism student living in Paris. The film follows Michel as he tries to evade arrest after killing a police officer; he struggles to raise the money needed to escape and convince the hesitant Patricia to flee with him to Italy. But the director was not so much interested in the crime narrative as he was in subverting cinematic conventions.

Born in 1930 to wealthy Franco-Swiss parents, Godard had spent the decade before the film's release Out of breath, immersed in the world of film. In the early 50s, he began working as a film critic for the influential magazine Cahiers du CinemaAt the time, French cinema was dominated by studio-produced literary adaptations, which valued embellished storytelling over novelty. Godard and his fellow cinephiles at the magazine opposed such films, arguing that they failed to capture real emotions or reflect how people actually behaved.

Meanwhile, American films that had been banned during the Nazi occupation were being shown in France. After World War II, France had signed the agreements Blum-Byrnes, which opened its markets to American products in exchange for the cancellation of its war debt. This led to a wave of American films that were enthusiastically embraced by these young French critics. They particularly admired Westerns and detective thrillers – genres they considered to be underappreciated by critics. It was the French-born Italian critic Nino Frank who coined the term film noir ose dark movie. Journal authors Cahiers du Cinema They also admired directors who could stamp their unique creative vision on Hollywood productions, such as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Howard Hawks. They considered these directors to be author – the real authors of their films – and not the studios that produced them or the stars who starred in them.

During the 50s, these critics discussed and analyzed the shortcomings of French cinema, while at the same time developing their own ideas about what it should be like. Many of the authors with whom Godard worked at Cahiers du Cinema, such as François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, also ended up as directors and became leading figures of New Wave [La Nouvelle Vague], a movement that would bring a revolution to world cinema.

Me Out of breath, Godard saw an opportunity to put into practice the ideas he and his friends had been debating for years. He explained to the BBC in 1964 that he deliberately aimed to break the rules that, in his opinion, were hindering the progress of cinema. “Conventions were blown up to create something from the remains, just as we collect the debris after an explosion. And when there is nothing useful left, we can start over on new ground,” he said.

The film's story was written by Truffaut, who was inspired by a 1952 newspaper article about a Parisian criminal named Michel Portail. However, when it came time to shoot, Godard almost abandoned Truffaut's script. Instead, he asked the actors to improvise scenes or dictate lines of dialogue to them behind the camera while he filmed. This gave the dialogue a spontaneous and personal feel, but also required Out of breath to be shot primarily in multiple sequences, so that Belmondo and Seberg would know what had happened previously in the event.

Due to the limited budget, Godard planned to make the film as cheaply as possible. Instead of shooting in a studio – where he would have control over the lighting, sound and set design – he chose to shoot on the streets of Paris, working with the master of photography, Raoul Coutard. The latter used a lightweight hand-held camera, which allowed for shooting in natural light and with fast movements. However, this camera had two main problems: it was very noisy and could not record synchronized sound. As a result, most of the improvised dialogue had to be written and dubbed later in post-production. This process resulted in a discrepancy between the actors’ lip movements and the dialogue, which is still debated today as to what the characters were actually saying.

Furthermore, because most of the scenes were shot without permission, ordinary people moving about the bustling streets and cafés of Paris were often included in the frame, giving the film an authentic and realistic feel. Coutard, who had been a war photographer, brought a style of documentary reportage, creating a sense of immediacy and more intimate importance to the film. The camera moves constantly, capturing small everyday moments as the characters meet, talk, and spend time together. At times, the camera seems almost like a participant in the action, perched in the passenger seat of the car that Michel had just stolen, talking to him as if he were a friend. The lack of a traditional film crew in Out of breath, added more invention and creativity to the film. One of its most famous scenes, where Michel and Patricia walk down the “Elysee” talking while she advertises a newspaper, was achieved when Godard pulled cinematographer Coutard in a wheelchair while the latter filmed the actors walking towards him.

“The freedom of filming on the ‘Elysees,’ Jean Seberg walking on the curb with that unforgettable call ‘New York Herald Tribune’ … for me it was like inventing a new mythology,” the Italian film director said. Last Tango in Paris [Last Tango in Paris] and The Last Emperor [The Last Emperor], Bernardo Bertolucci, in an interview for the film program [The Film Programme] on the BBC, in 2009.

But Godard wasn't trying to convince the audience that they were seeing an unfiltered reality. He was influenced by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who believed that a story could immerse the audience so deeply in the events that they became passive and unresponsive. To keep the audience engaged, Brecht reminded them that they were watching a play, not real life.

Godard embraced this idea, using a series of stylistic techniques that made it impossible for viewers to forget that they were watching a film. Characters often break the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly with their dialogue. Often, they comment on their situation, shocking the viewer into feeling like an invisible spectator. Meanwhile, in a typical film, the music of the soundtrack subtly suggests the tone of the scene, but in Out of breath the music stops and starts suddenly, often with no connection to what is happening on screen.

But it was Godard's refusal to follow traditional rules of editing that became the film's most distinctive feature. "I was passionate about the style, about the language of film. Out of breath,” director Bernardo Bertolucci told the BBC. “There were, for example, these jump cuts. At school we were always told how to avoid them, because they were considered mistakes – and the film was full of them.”

Such montage – sudden jumps forward in time within the same scene – occurred almost by accident. The film turned out to be longer than planned, and Godard needed to shorten it. But rather than remove entire scenes or sequences, the director chose to condense the duration by cutting out parts within a scene. Often, he would cut segments from a continuous movement or dialogue, without even trying to harmonize the montage, breaking the viewer’s immersion in the flow of the film and giving it an energetic and uncertain rhythm.

This nervous and messy editing style made Out of breath to feel unpredictable, capturing the audience's attention and forcing them to be aware of the filmmaking process. Godard did this also by referencing other films, while simultaneously subverting the very conventions that made those films functional.

Otto Preminger's dark 1950 thriller Whirls [Whirlpool], was shown in the cinema when Patricia goes inside to lose track of the police pursuing her. In another scene, when she looks at Michelle through a rolled-up poster, the frame imitates a scene from a western. Forty revolvers [Forty Guns, 1957], where the view is through the muzzle of a gun. The famous French gangster film director Jean-Pierre Melville appears in a cameo role as a famous writer, while Godard himself makes a brief appearance as a random passerby who recognizes Michel from newspaper articles.

In another reference to Godard's homage to those who inspired him, protagonist Michel dresses as his idol, Humphrey Bogart, and attempts to emulate his on-screen attitude and mannerisms. At one point, while looking at a poster for Bogart's last film, The hard fall [The Harder They Fall, 1956], he whispers adoringly "Boi". But, unlike Bogart's classic heroism, Michel's behavior is neither heroic nor courageous. He shows no remorse for his crimes, nor any remorse for his actions. Meanwhile, Patricia, who ultimately betrays him to the police, can be seen as a femme fatale [fatal woman], but unlike her predecessors in the films Black, she does not seem to be driven by passion, as their relationship is unusual and her motives remain unclear. In Out of breath The meaning is never directly explained to the audience. Its loose narrative and morally ambiguous characters do not provide clear answers. The film does not offer the viewer a structured narrative or a clear moral, but leaves them to draw their own conclusions.

With its unique storytelling, creative camera work, and photogenic young protagonists, who gave the film a natural and attractive feel, Out of breath It became an immediate success, both critically and commercially. The film seemed to capture the spirit of the times, and people flocked to see it. “They were, in a way, ready for it,” Professor James Williams told journalist Kirsty Lang on the programme The last word [Last word] of the BBC in 2022. “People wanted something new and different.” The film earned Godard the Silver Bear Award for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1960.

For the young directors who saw Out of breath, its impact was immense. "As an upcoming director, it was like feeling completely free, like you were on some kind of drug. It was just amazing," the film's director told the BBC in 2006. Catch Carter [Get Carter], Mike Hodges. “He broke all the rules – and the rules of cinema, in many ways, are scary. You have to shoot the right angles, you have lines that you can’t cross. That was the classical tradition. So, in a sense, cinema was very similar to classical painters, and when I saw Godard’s film, it was like seeing the Impressionists come to life on screen.”

The impact of Out of breath would be felt in many of the American films that followed its premiere, with Godard influencing the Hollywood studios that had previously influenced him so much. The moral ambiguity of the film's characters Out of breath and the sudden shifts in tone can be seen in Bonnie and Clyde [Bonnie and Clyde, 1967], the innovative camera frames and examination of uncertainty in relationships are reflected in The graduate [The Graduate, 1967], while low-budget filming techniques and improvised dialogue were embraced in Motorcyclists [Easy Rider, 1969].

In the 70s, a wave of young directors inspired by New Wave, like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, would bring their own unique visions to the screen as authorsDirector Quentin Tarantino, who named his production company The Band Apart, based on the Godard film Band of Outsiders (1964), has long acknowledged the influence the director had on him. In an interview for Movie How in 1994, he said: “Godard did for films what Bob Dylan did for music: both revolutionized their forms.”

Part of the continuing impact of Out of breath to directors is the fact that has convinced them that it is possible for the viewer to do exactly what Godard did. The film director The sound of the living dead [Shaun of the Dead], Edgar Wright, wrote after Godard's death in 2022: "It was ironic that he himself appreciated the Hollywood system of studio films, since perhaps no other director has inspired more people to pick up a camera and start shooting." /Telegraph/