Breathless - Bradley Strickland

Goddard was tired of being told how to be artistic and bored with being simply a cog in the movie machine. Instead, he decided to reject it all and defy the conventions of his own national cinema. This reactionary group of New Wave directors attacked nearly every aspect of French traditional film.

Breathless is filmed much like a documentary. Goddard rejects the artistic pans and zooms of the studio, a false reality, and embraces the hard, fast real world by filming on open sets and streets. Goddard even rejects the use of artificial lighting and instead allows the film to be naturally lit. Even further, the film uses a jumpy handheld camera to follow a relatively unremarkable criminal, Michel. Whenever he walks, the camera follows unsteadily behind. It is almost as if we are literally Michel’s right hand man. His dialogue even supports this in that in many instances, particularly the beginning of the film, Michel’s voice speaks to us about women and tells us how to drive, all making metaphorical commentary on how to live life. The film seems to document his life as it is without staged dramatizations or obviously scripted lines. It uses our intimacy with the character and the drama of the real world to make us sympathetic towards the criminal. This is even more evident when we see our character betrayed not just by Patricia, but the world.

However, Goddard’s most obvious attack on his national cinema was the utilization of the jump cut. Unsatisfied with the classical editing that dominated French films before the New Wave, Goddard wanted to show that unconventional editing has value and a place in film. In fact, he was confident that other types of editing not practiced in mainstream French studio films may be more effective. His jump cut is very effective in Breathless. It makes us feel disoriented and confused. It gives the impression that something is missing; that there is a void in the space and time of the film’s action. However, these jumps, despite being somewhat annoying, are deliberate and serve to prompt us to think critically or to at least think about the film. We are not being fed everything as in more traditional films. Instead, we are forced to fill these gaps and use our imagination. We actually have to think - as we do in everyday life - not just watch.