Another Look at Godard's Breathless (Screenplay and Film)

Bon. This film is what launched Jean luc Godard into super stardom. It put him and the French New Wave on the map. I have seen the film 5 or 6 times and every time the film is better. It still has the punch, the radicalism, the avant garde sensibility that it did the first time. It is truly a milestone in filmmaking and film history. Like Rosselini's Rome Open City it started a revolution in filmmaking. Before films were, for the most part, stuffy, over produced, period pieces and/or costume dramas that lacked realism or any innovation. Breathless meant that anyone could make a film. All you needed was a camera and some actors. Perhaps I'm overestimating a bit, but I really think this is a crucial film in the development of cinema. Before producers would have balked at a film with shoestring cinematography and jump cuts. After Breathless, their proved to be a possiblity that films of this kind could find an audience.

The scene I like best, and that I am always returning to on youtub is the bedroom scene. It lasts about 15-20 minutes and is so entertaining. It wasn't scripted at all. Godard made the script girl stand outside of the apartment the whole time they were shooting. Much of it was improvisation. And it works incredibly well. The chemistry between Belmondo and Seberg is legendary. The way they work off one another; him always pushing, she always denying. Until finally she relents. All in the space of a small apartment. It also reveals much about Paris and France of the times. The growing youth movement, the disaffection with De Gaulle, the love of jazz and sex. It was quite controversial to have pre-marital sex in Catholic France. Maybe it was this film that broke down some barriers with regards to sex before marriage? I' ll have to do some research on that.

The narrative is also heartbreaking. Why does Seberg turn in Belmondo? Why doesn't she run away with him to Italy? The end is so bittersweet. The couple that is so in love, willing to evade the police, yet she turns on him in the end. And he totally resigns. He says he prefers prison. I couldn't believe it. I was hoping he would run away with the money and never be found. I guess I was hoping for a more "Hollywood" end to the film. After all it's a nouvelle vague film. What would you expect? Tres triste!

The film doesn't follow strictly the three act structure. There is a setup, Bel Mondo shoots the cop, there is a conflict, will he move away to Italy, and there is a resolution, he gives up and is shot to death. Yet, there is the bedroom scene which is long and seems to meander, if that's the right word, perhaps it's existentialist philosophizing? Whatever it is it creates a lull in the action. Yet it is the best scene in the film and makes the whole betrayal of Belmondo that much more heartbreaking.

I read the screenplay to the film too. It was done in a style I'm not used to. It had all the camera angles in the script. The dialogue was there, but it was much different from a Paul Schrader screenplay which reads like a novel. This must be a European format. I found it when I read some of RWF's Marriage of Maria Braun. That one also had all the camera angles in it. The film followed the screenplay to the letter. There were no differences in the film to the screenplay. It was a good read, pretty fast, and not boring.