A Bout De Souffle - Watching the 1000 Greatest Films

No. 11 - A Bout De Souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Ranked - #33

'There's no need to lie. It's like poker. The truth is best. The others still think you're bluffing, so you win' - (Michel Poiccard)

Somehow I managed to miss this film during my ill-fated Film Studies A-level that I failed spectacularly some 15 years back. I just wasn't ready for this film then, my idea of great cinema happened to be whatever was on the local cinema that week. I fidgeted in class, flicked ink balls at my mate and generally ignored the whole thing. The odd thing though was that the next week we were shown 'The 400 Blows' and I was enraptured and have seen it a dozen times since.


Minutes into the film you can sense the text book being ripped up and even 45 years later it appears more daring, original and dangerous than a whole year's worth of Hollywood product. Reacting to what the French New Wave pioneers dubbed 'Le Cinema Da Papa' (Dads Cinema), A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) was hailed a true revolutionary movie on release. Breathless is also rather generic, that's to say that the themes and genre are nothing new, rehashing those cheap gangster films from Godard's youth.

I felt that the film was something of a love letter, steeped in cultural references and in-jokes, several leading critics and directors appear in cameo roles; Jean-Pierre Melville appears as a celebrity novelist whilst Traffaut, Chabrol and Goddard even make bit appearances. Our protagonist Michel Piccard, played masterly by Jean-Paul Belmondo marking the beginning of what went on to be an extraordinary career, adores the persona of Humphrey Bogart, even going as far to quote him from time to time, he evens looks longingly at a film poster of his beloved hero.


Breathless is famous for it's revolutionary use of the 'jump cut', a sudden edit in the middle of action or dialouge (see video clip below for an example), a technique that's now something of a standard practice. At the time however it broke all the conventional film making rules, yet it may have been more accidental than political as John Dawson from Senses of Cinema writes -

'The film, loosely (with a minimal and constantly changing shooting script) based on a 'crim on the run' storyline by François Truffaut, ended up as a rough cut of around two hours long – more the length of the despised blockbusters then and now. To be considered a commercial product the movie needed to lose about 30 minutes, so rather than cut out whole scenes or sequences, Godard elected to trim within the scene, creating the jagged cutting style still so beloved of action filmmakers. Godard just went at the film with the scissors, cutting out anything he thought boring and as a result the whole movie does indeed feel rather 'breathless', each scene seeming to rush jerkily to a finish, with barely enough time to make full sense. Who would have ever guessed that what is now a cinematic cliché (at its most excessive in the late '60s and the '70s) could have had so practical a raison d'etre?'

As for the actual story of the film, for what there is, we begin in Marseilles where our antihero, Michel, a wannabe hood, steals the first of several cars and kills a traffic cop on his way to Paris. While trying to pick up money owed to him by fellow crooks, he renews his friendship with well-off American girl called Patricia (Jean Seberg), who's selling newspapers on the Champs Elysees. The pair talk a lot, a murder investigation goes on around them and, ultimately, she betrays him to the cops; the final scene baring the result of this portrayal is one of the more famous scenes in the film.

So much had been made of this film I was almost certain that I was going to be disappointed, in fact the truth is I've now watched this three times in as many weeks. We are talking about a real landmark of cinema history here, basking in the same light as Citizen Kane or The Battleship Potemkin, films that challenged and changed cinematic techniques. Much of what is so striking about this film was quickly assimilated into the cinematic language - jump cuts, natural lighting, unnatural sound, philosophical dialogues, cinematic homages (Bogart, Melville, Hawkes) and so on. Simply put this is a great film that I couldn't recommend highly enough, please do yourself the favour and watch it now.