Breathless

   

            In previous journal review towards the Italian Neorealist film Bicycle Thieves, I had briefly discussed one of the famous film movement throughout the history of film art which is Italian Neorealism. So, in today’s journal. I would like to defined and explain about another film movement – French New Wave, with the aid of the movie film Breathless. French New Wave is actually a term coined by the critics of a group of French filmmakers between the late 1950s and 1960s. In the film industry, French New Wave started in 1959 with Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard, while ended in 1969 with Weekend by the same director as well. Before 1950s and 1960s, French films were mainly literacy adaptations, especially that fictional tales were published in books and adapted to cinema. These films were usually filmed with the studio system or on big budget spectacles and international co-productions.

:::FRENCH NEW WAVE:::

               For now, I would like to explain about the flow of the movement for French New Wave. During 1950s, there was a documentary movement happened in France. Many filmmakers were making documentaries of Nazi’s death camps, cinema verite and sane man in lunatic asylum. At the same decade but in 1951, a French film magazine, Cahiers du Cinema, was founded by Andre Bazin and Jacques Donial Valcroze. For this magazine there was a group of writers, namely Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. These film lovers watched many previously unreleased movies at the Cinematheque Francaise, a film archive and public theatre, in Paris during the post-war years. Continued, these young men do love film and wanted to be filmmakers but were unable to get into the French commercial cinema. Instead, they turned to theory and criticism, become into critics and theorists. Back to the magazine Cahiers du Cinema, there are few principles held in it. 1) It rejects montage aesthetics, favouring mise-en-scene. Based on the ideology, films should not be intellectual or contain rational experiences but should include emotional and psychological experiences. 2) Personal Authorship. According to the ideology of it, “Policy of Authors” or the Auteur Theory states that film should be a medium of personal artistic expression, bearing the filmmakers’ signatures in terms of personality, controlling obsession and cardinal themes. The works of the auteur also should grow proficiently and mature in vision with each successive film.

In the tradition of films, Truffaut rejects heavy emphasis on plot and dialogue, preferring visual aesthetics and mise-en-scene. While in the French New Wave, it is more independent and low budget in the economic portion; self-reflexivity in aesthetic portion. In the wave, the characters are often marginalized: young anti-heroes and loners, with no family ties, who behave spontaneously, often act immorally, and are frequently seen as anti-authoritarian. Besides, women were given strong parts that didn’t conform to archetypal roles seen in Hollywood. There is also a general cynicism concerning politics, often expressed as a disillusionment with foreign policy in Algeria or Indo-China. After these elaborations, let’s get into the movie film of this week’s journal: Breathless. Breathless is a 1960 French film, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, which is also his first feature-length work.

:::SYNOPSIS:::

It all started by a criminal, Michel who stole a car and shot a policeman who had followed him in his way of driving. On the run from the police, he met a student and journalist, Patricia, who was selling New York Herald Tribune on the streets of Paris. In the deepness of Michel’s seduction towards Patricia, she hid him in an apartment along with her staying in the same room. Michel also call in a loan to fund both of them to Italy. After that, Patricia was pregnant, probably with his child. Later on, she knew that Michel is on the run from the police. She betrayed him, but she told him the truth before actually making a report to the police. At the end, Michel died due to out of breath, after getting shot and having a long run.

:::ANALYSIS:::

               Aligned with French New Wave, the film Breathless do reject the traditions of film, in terms of many sections. One of the way how this film rejects traditions is having elliptical, jump cuts. In the film, these jump cuts are seen in the scene where Michel drove Patricia to her destination. In the journey, there are short dialogues in the beginning, ant the jump cuts become more frequent as Michel started to compliment Patricia until they reached the place. Jump cuts do favour mise-en-scene, because it is the way to show actors’ movements and facial expressions in a more defined way while other visuals like settings and props are in a constant state. Another than jump cuts, the scenes are shoot in real locations instead of studio. And because they are shooting in location, it uses lower budget than the traditional films. It is obvious that the whole movie has used real locations. As an example, Michel chats with Patricia when she was selling the New York Herald Tribune on the streets. Moreover, French New Wave suggested using handheld cameras in their film. In Breathless, handheld cameras were used on the ending scene where Michel was having a long run before his death due to out of breath. In that scene, the scene is not so smooth, but shaken sometimes. Long takes are also taken in every French New Wave films. In the movie of this week, long takes are taken in the scene where they are in the first apartment, and the scene where Michel and Patricia met at the first time. Like how jump cuts favour mise-en-scene, long takes also favour mise-en-scene too. In long takes, we are able to see all the mise-en-scene, and also able to see the slight changes of every frameworks. Last but not least, to depart from traditions of film, actors are encouraged to improvise dialogues and talk over each other’s lines to reflect real-life conversations. This cause results in lengthy, unrelated dialogs between characters, and also an approach to oppose staged conversations like traditional American films.

:::CONCLUSION:::

               As a conclusion, the film movement French New Wave is welly used in the movie film Breathless, especially in the aesthetic way. The movie is low budget, with rejecting the traditions, having jump cuts, location shooting, having direct sound and available light, using handheld cameras, having long takes, and providing improvised plot and dialogue. Overall, the film is not as bored as what I think, but knowing how a criminal lives in the run at the same time. It also shows me how some of the male can be so seduce to flirt a female. Majorly, it shows how love can be so cruel to end if the partner is actually a criminal, yet the person cannot help his or her partner to hide their identity from the police. And in the end, it hurts to see the partner to die in front of his or her eyes with the chase of police. To conclude, Patricia does play a good role for me, which she did not hid Michel from the police just because she loved him, and also telling him the truth before she “hurt” him silently by reporting to police in the first step.