Breathless (2006)

Much of the time, if you profess to not like Breathless, a few New Wave devotees kind of sniff and intimate that, obviously, you didn't understand it.The hell I didn't. I was a teenager when the New Wave (Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Resnais, et. al) erupted. I saw ALL the key films when they came out. I tried very hard to be impressed, to string along with the huge number of critics who oohed with delight about cinema verité, hand-held cameras and improvised dialogue. But I couldn't do it then, and I still can't.I've watched Breathless twice completely and half a dozen times incompletely, over the past 50+ years. Yes, I understand it's a milestone. Yes, the film was a radical departure from standard studio-produced fare. Yes, it broke many so-called 'rules' of feature film-making.But sorry. All that doesn't make for a movie that's good. It bores. It rambles. It irritates by its ineptness. The images are very uneven in quality. The sound is pretty bad. In truth, one is expected, even urged, to admire it for its defects.Jean-Luc Godard (who is Swiss, though considered one of the pillars of the French New Wave) still makes movies today in 2018, at 87 years of age. Still does the festival circuit. And his movies are much improved technically. Almost all have a few pretty good scenes. But by and large, they're not meant to entertain. They're supposed to make you think. To react and reflect on the images and ideas he's throwing out at you.Now, back to Breathless (which a poor translation of the original French title 'A bout de souffle' that really means 'out of steam, out of energy, near the end of the line'.)If you've never seen it, by all means do so, simply for its reputation. And if like me, you were lucky enough to visit Paris in the 1950s and early 1960s, you'll be rewarded by once again seeing the city as it really was. Complete with a girl (the late, beloved Jean Seberg) on foot, hawking the late, beloved International Herald Tribune to American tourists. Just for those delights, my rating is 4/10 - about two points higher than it might otherwise receive from soft-hearted me.PS: If you find New Wave really hard to get through, stick with Truffaut. He rarely bores the way Godard and Resnais do. And how he evolved, year by year, into a master film craftsman is a story in itself.

After stealing a car and subsequently killing a motorcycle cop who is pursuing him, a young thug named "Michel Poiccard" (Jean-Paul Belmondo) goes to Paris to see a young American student named "Patricia Franchini" (Jean Seberg) in the hope that she will escape with him to Rome. His desperation increases when he learns that he has been identified as the killer and so he turns on the charm even more in his attempt to have Patricia accompany him. But in order to do that he needs to get his hands on some money that a friend happens to owe him and that requires something he doesn't have much of—time. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film definitely has its share of accolades which includes a Silver Bear Award for "Best Director" (Jean-Luc Godard) at the Berlin International Film Festival that same year. That being said, however, I don't think the picture has aged very well and for that matter I didn't particularly care for the lead character either. For those reasons I have rated this film accordingly. Average.

A character study about Michel ( Jean-Paul Belmondo ), a young criminal who acts tough and tries to be like Bogart, and Patricia (Jean Seberg), an American who sells the New York Herald- Tribune. Patricia's involvement with him seems to be purely because of her curiosity towards his affection and his strange, comical behavior almost identical to the one which is shown again in "Pierrot le Fou". Jean Seberg's acting is ridiculously dull and her expressions throughout the film are almost as uneventful as the plot of the film itself. Jean- Paul Belmondo's acting on the other hand, although full of style is still unconvincing. You cant really blame him though, his character's persona is just not in any way believable. The level of detachment and obliviousness is simply too extreme. The Film's music is also absolutely horrendous, I doubt I could recall a movie that has a genuinely worse soundtrack.However, the truly disgusting thing about this movie, is the amount of jump cuts Godard forcibly tries to stuff down our throat, it makes me wonder whether the films last lines were really referring to Godard himself.Out of boredom ( due to the films basically non-existent plot ) I couldn't help but resort to wondering whether these extremely disturbing 'jumpcuts' were necessary. The answer, which is also the answer to most French New Wave films is yes and no. If the film did not contain these 'jump cuts', many of them purposely used in the most unconventional way possible, the film would not have its historical importance and status of being revolutionary. The jumps cuts in this Film have no real purpose other than to rebel against cinema norms at the time and attract attention as a result. In other words there was no 'message', 'deeper meaning' or even aesthetic purpose behind them. Its only purpose was to distinguish this film, which without all its pretentious bull would be no more than a boring, poorly written and poorly acted character study, from all the other boring, poorly written and poorly acted character studies. The Film instead is a NEW, DIFFERENT and MODERN boring, poorly written and poorly acted character study. These days the film is met with enthusiasm, mainly because without objective standards, style is valued over substance and originality is valued over genuine merit. Although you cannot deny the historical importance of this film as a cinematic landmark, you can definitely question it. There's no harm in rebelling against norms to create effect but never at the expense of overall enjoyment. Breathless however, simply rebels for shock value and to standout as something new, different and as most New Wave fans would put it 'Bold.'

ridiculous, false (not a single emotion is sensed), repetition of cliché senseless sentences, stupid plot, the only average scene is the last one; the only reason it got a success in the 1960s is a sheepish tendency to follow blindly the intellectual fashion of that time; i just saw it 40 years after the 1st time and had a very hard time to stay until the end; the French Nouvelle Vague does not match any of the contemporaneous high quality movies made by the other people; any Japanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Swedish or British (not to mention Hitch and American classics) great movie of the fifties is worth 1.000 Godards