À bout de souffle (1960)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Film Review

When a cinéphile talks about the French Revolution, you can be fairly certain that he is not alluding to that messy business that took place in France in the latter years of 18th Century, in which aristocrat hunting became the national sport and the country acquired a constitution and a catchy anthem. No, what he has in mind is that other revolution, the one that hit French cinema with the force of a tsunami and tornado combined in the late 1950s thanks to the emergence of a dynamic new breed of film director who sought to make cinema truer, bolder and more relevant to contemporary audiences.  One of the leading figures in this French New Wave was Jean-Luc Godard, a former critic on the influential review paper Les Cahiers du cinéma, who had an impact of seismic proportions with his debut feature, À bout de souffle.  When asked what the film was supposed to be about, Godard simply said that it was a documentary about Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

From the end result, it is hard to believe that À bout de souffle started out as nothing more than a conventional gangster film.  The basic storyline came from François Truffaut, who had developed it for his first feature but later rejected it in favour of another, which became Les 400 coups (1959).  Truffaut passed the plot concept over to Jean-Luc Godard, who was stuck for an idea for his first film.   The story concept was not one that impressed Godard, but two aspects appealed to him: the notion of a man obsessed with death and the association with classic film noir.  From this basic premise, Godard was able to pursue some of the themes that would become central to his oeuvre - existentialism (fatalism versus free-will) and power struggles in male-female relationships. 

What started out as a modest tribute to Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep ended up as something far more profound - one man's search for identity and meaning, seen through the distorting prism of a gangster thriller played as a romantic comedy.  It was not the subject of the film that mattered, though.  What was far more significant was how it was put together.  It was as if its director had deliberately set out to break every single rule in the professional filmmakers' handbook.  The straitjacket that had throttled creativity in French cinema for the past few decades was ripped open by Godard in this film, with as much frenzy and dramatic impact as Hitchcock's carving up of Janet Leigh in Psycho.  Cinema would never be the same again. 

In view of the splash À bout de souffle made, you would think that Jean-Luc Godard knew exactly what he had in mind before he started making the film.  The reality was that Godard had only a vague idea of what the film was meant to be about when he began filming in August 1959 and pretty well made it up as he went along.  (This is not as revolutionary as its sounds - many of the films in the silent era were made this way, including most of Chaplin's early shorts.)   Instead of a script, all that Godard had was a few sketchy notes which allowed him to give his actors a broad outline of what he wanted them to perform each day.   Although he was not asking his actors to improvise, Godard did give them considerable freedom, something that his lead, Jean-Paul Belmondo, found extremely liberating.

Belmondo had previously worked with Godard on his humorous short film Charlotte et son Jules and had turned down the opportunity to work with Julien Duvivier on Boulevard (1960) because he favoured Godard's directing technique.  Belmondo was, at this stage in his career, still an unknown commodity, and had only been seen in small supporting roles.  It was for this reason that producer Georges de Beauregard insisted that Godard cast an established actress for the female lead, so the director selected Jean Seberg on the strength of her performance in Otto Preminger's Bonjour tristesse (1958).  At the time, Seberg was under contract with Columbia Pictures.  When Godard offered Columbia 12,000 dollars or a percentage of the profits to release the actress, the studio opted for the former, convinced that the film would flop. 

Not having to work to a script or a schedule gave Godard considerable freedom, which he exploited fully, although neither of his lead actors had much confidence that he would end up with a coherent film.  À bout de souffle was filmed entirely in Paris in real locations using a lightweight Eclair Cameflex camera, which allowed for some interesting tracking shots with the camera operator (Raoul Coutard) following Belmondo and Seberg through the busy Parisian locations with the camera mounted on his shoulder.  There was no provision for lighting, so the entire film was shot in natural light, achieving a near-documentary feel which other directors of the nouvelle vague would emulate in their films.  Godard and his crew would turn up at various locations (including the offices of Les Cahiers du cinéma) and start filming without requesting permission, not bothering about the passers-by who gawped at the camera whilst a scene was being recorded.  Notice also how there is absolutely no reaction from the surrounding Parisians in the sequence at the end of the film where Belmondo is chased down a street by his guntoting enemies.  These little touches of unreality, splinters in the fourth wall, reveal how easily we are taken in by the filmmaker's art, how willingly we accept the reality of what we see on the screen.  They also serve to remind us that reality can itself be an illusion.  Barely ten minutes into the film, we know that Belmondo's character (Michel) has all but lost his sense of reality; he is living in a dream-like fantasy - perhaps he even imagines that he is only acting in a movie?  Maybe he really does believe he is Bogart - once he has taken the bullet, he'll be able to walk off the set and shoot another picture the next day.  But is this delusion or reality?  Could this be what life really is - when we die, we just get up and play another role, live another life, ad infinitum?

After the month-long shoot, Godard then had the arduous task of editing the film into a marketable proposition.  His initial cut ran to three hours, which was unacceptable for a theatrical release.  Jean-Pierre Melville (the director who was probably Godard's biggest influence and who appears in the film in a cameo role) suggested removing everything that was not relevant to the main plot.  This would undoubtedly have resulted in a far more conventional gangster thriller, but Godard had not set out to make this kind of film.  Instead, he did pretty well the exact opposite of what Melville advised, dispensing with most of the scenes that deserved to be there (on narrative grounds) and keeping the rest.  Because no dialogue had been recorded whilst the film was being shot, this had to be added during post-production - by this stage, Godard had got round to writing the script.  (How many other filmmakers write the script after completing the filming?)  Whilst Godard's inspired use of the jump-cut is an essential part of the film's aesthetic and fits because it reveals the main protagonist's fractured psychology through a jarring temporal distortion, it is likely that this was an entirely fortuitous outcome of the way in which the director chose to make his film.  This is precisely the kind of creative jolt that tends to get smothered by the conventional approach to filmmaking, which requires everything to be mapped out in advance.  Being a great fan of jazz, Godard hired the great jazz pianist and composer Martial Solal to provide the film's score, another touch of modernity which helped to set it apart from other contemporary French films.

The release of À bout de souffle in March 1960 was a pivotal moment in film history.  Most of France's leading critics were ecstatic in their praise for the film and many saw it as a turning point in French cinema, the day on which the temple of comformity came tumbling down.  Although today's film historians will tell us that the French New Wave began two years previously, with debut features from Claude Chabrol, Louis Malle and François Truffaut, À bout de souffle was the first film of the nouvelle vague to show just what it represented - a decisive and irreversible break with the cinema of the past.  The film was not only groundbreaking cinema, it was also a commercial success, attracting an audience of two million in France on its first release.  In addition, it won Godard two prestigious awards - the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1960 and the Prix Jean Vigo.

As well as putting Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Paul Belmondo on the map, launching two cinema legends on their respective careers, À bout de souffle altered everyone's perception of what a film should be and how films should be made.  The conventions which most filmmakers had been slavishly adhering to for the past twenty or so years were exposed for what they were - unnecessary constraints that inhibited creative freedom and denied audiences new and exciting cinema-going experiences.  It was the dawn of a new age - the age of the auteur.  What happened in France in the 1960s would be repeated in other countries around the world, including the United States.  The rich diversity that we see in cinema today (particularly in France) can be seen as a consequence of the celluloid revolution that was instigated by Jean-Luc Godard and his New Wave contemporaries in the early 1960s, and the film that rang the changes most stridently was À bout de souffle, a film so radical, so subversive that it left audiences and critics breathless.

Film Synopsis

Michel Poiccard is a small-time crook on a mission: to recover some money owed to him by his criminal associates.  To that end, he steals a car in Marseille and heads for Paris.  It is a bad omen that the car's glove compartment contains a loaded gun.  When a policeman indicates for Michel to stop the car, he doesn't hesitate to use the gun to kill the troublesome cop.  Now he is in deeper trouble than ever before, but he seems not to care.  For the moment, he is young and free, and that's all that matters.  On his arrival in Paris, Michel has a chance encounter with a young American student with whom he had previously had a brief affair in Nice.

Patricia appears glad to meet up with her former lover - it offers her a welcome break from her temporary job, selling American newspapers on the Champs-Elysées.  Michel needs a place to hide out so he persuades the trusting Patricia to let him stay with her in her shoebox apartment.  The young woman is glad of Michel's company but his obvious attempts at seduction prove fruitless, mainly because she is pregnant and uncertain who the father is.  As Patricia hurries off to Orly airport to interview a famous writer at a press conference, Michel sets about recovering his money.

First, Michel heads for a car park to equip himself with another stolen car, but as he does so he can't help noticing his photograph in the newspapers.  It seems he has already been identified as a cop killer.  Aware that the net is closing in on him, Michel takes refuge in his girlfriend's apartment.  When Patricia realises she is sheltering a dangerous criminal she secretly denounces him to the police.  This betrayal disgusts Michel and he tries to make a break for it.  Hunted in the streets of Paris by his police pursuers he doesn't get far.  By the time Fate catches up with him he is completely breathless.  Patricia is left puzzling over his final word: dégueulasse...