Breathless (1960, Fr.) (aka A Bout de Souffle)

In French writer/director Jean-Luc Godard's pioneering, landmark New Wave film, his first feature film - this innovative, influential, and fresh film - a noirish, crime-gangster romance - liberally used the jump cut (in jagged, jolting and non-logical ways), a hand-held camera, natural lighting, non-linear storytelling, on-location shootings, and loose, improvised direction and editing. There was no solid script to be rehearsed, and the sound was unsynchronized (and only added in post production). The entire free-spirited film seemed disorganized, reckless, and roughly-hewn - as a deliberate strategy to harshly communicate movement, urgency, and excitement.

The main character in the cool and 'hip' low-budget film was a nihilistic, Parisian wanna-be, petty thug and self-destructive daredevil (with a fetish and admiration for American actor Humphrey Bogart and film noir) who was played by 26 year-old Jean-Paul Belmondo. The entire film played up, copied, and was a parody of American gangster films. The disaffected young male joined up with his aloof and detached 20 year-old US girlfriend-lover (portrayed by 22 year-old Jean Seberg) - an ultimate femme fatale character in a doomed romance. Both exhibited self-indulgence and narcissism and appeared in lengthy and incoherent scenes (expressing considerable boredom, dissatisfaction, and dazed confusion) before they were led to a tragic, inevitable ending.

The original story for the film was written by Godard's friend and colleague Francois Truffaut, another New Wave writer and director, while its traditional screenplay was written by Godard himself (although uncredited). Breathless owed some of its "lovers on the lam" plot to predecessors including Nicholas Ray's They Live by Night (1948) and Joseph H. Lewis's Gun Crazy (1950). It went on to influence auteurs such as Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde (1966)), Terence Malick (Badlands (1973)), Steven Spielberg (The Sugarland Express (1974)), and Robert Altman (Thieves Like Us (1974)).

There were no credits in the film except for the opening title and the word "FIN" at the end. The film was remade as director Jim McBride's R-rated Breathless (1983), starring Richard Gere and Valerie Kaprisky as the two lovers in Los Angeles (although the roles were reversed - the male was American and the female was French).

• the film opened with Godard's dedication to the US studio Monogram Pictures, known for low-budget, grade-B crime dramas
• the film's first image was the comic page of a newspaper (Paris-Flirt), with a sketched drawing of a sexy, lingerie-wearing pin-up model (seen from behind); the newspaper was lowered to reveal the main male character; the first line of dialogue was comprised of the musings of the male speaker (voice-over and off-screen): "After all, I'm stupid (or an asshole)" - coming from the lips of a young, arrogant and vulgar thug - a wanted car thief named Michel Poiccard/alias Laszlo Kovacs (Jean-Paul Belmondo); the anti-hero character was reading a newspaper in Marseilles, wearing a tilted fedora-hat and smoking a cigarette; he traced his thumb over both closed lips (a trademark gesture)

Film's Opening: Petty Thug Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo)

• Michel's girlfriend in Marseilles signaled to him that a potential car to steal had parked nearby; Michel hotwired the US-made Oldsmobile automobile owned by a US Army Officer, and drove the stolen car off toward Paris - he refused to take his girlfriend with him; his plan was to drive to Paris, collect on some debts, pick up another girlfriend named Patricia, and flee to Rome with her
• as he drove through the countryside, he addressed the camera-audience; at one point, he declined to pick up two "ugly" female hitchhikers; after finding a gun in the glove compartment, he pretended to shoot at the sun and passing cars; he murdered a motorcycle policeman who stopped him for speeding - emphasized with a magnification of his gun before he pulled the trigger; once he arrived in Paris by hitchhiking, he looked in a newspaper to see if he had been identified as a killer, and then wiped his shoes with the paper
• Michel met up with one of his ex-girlfriends (an assistant film scriptwriter) in her apartment, who suggested: "You need to sleep around," and also asked: "Ever been a gigolo?"; when she was distracted, he recklessly stole money from her purse and from money (500 francs) she offered to loan to him; she called him a "creep"
• and then on the street, he located his flighty, short-haired 20 year-old American girlfriend Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) from New York who was selling newspapers (the New York Herald Tribune - displayed on her T-shirt) on the Champs-Elysees boulevard; he had known the radiantly-beautiful, tomboyish, aspiring journalist student for only five nights during a short trysting affair in Nice (before she left him)
• Michel tried to repeatedly convince her to join him in Rome: "Come with me to Rome?"; the camera followed behind them and overheard their conversation (Michel: "It's crazy. I wanted to see if I'd be glad to see you again"), and then they reversed themselves; he bought one of her newspapers and looked for his horoscope, but couldn't find one; he asked Patricia: "I want to know the future. Don't you?"; he told her that he first had to collect money owed to him and then would see her: "I have to see a man who owes me money. Then I have to see you"; she refused his continued attempts to get her to leave Paris, because she was planning to attend the Sorbonne from money supplied by her rich parents: "I have to enroll at the Sorbonne so my parents will send money"; they considered meeting up later that evening
• after leaving Patricia, Michel walked past a poster for writer/director Robert Aldrich's action drama Ten Seconds to Hell (1959) (starring Jack Palance) with the tagline: "LIVE DANGEROUSLY UNTIL THE END!"; a young girl approached on a street corner to sell Michel a copy of the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma No. 97 (the July 1959 edition with a picture from the film Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) on its cover, another New Wave film; one of the magazine's regular writers was Godard - this film's pioneering director), but he ignored her, and she asked: "Sir, have you anything against youth?"; he answered: "Sure do. I prefer old people"
• Michel witnessed a car accident that left a male pedestrian (Jacques Rivette) dead on the street; Michel crossed himself, and then noticed in the newspaper that he had been identified as a police murderer: ("POLICEMAN'S KILLER IDENTIFIED"); inside the Inter-Americana Agency, he met with Mr. Tolmachov (Richard Balducci) to collect on a debt; Michel also attempted to contact by phone another colleague Antonio Berruti (Henri-Jacques Huet) to pay up on another debt, but couldn't reach him
• after leaving the agency, two police inspectors arrived to ask about murder suspect Michel - who was identified as an ex-Air France steward who regularly collected his mail there; although Tolmachov lied to the inspectors about recently seeing Michel, his secretary told the men that Michel had just come into the agency five minutes earlier
• while wandering around Paris and exting onto the sidewalk from a subway entrance, Michel paused outside of a movie theatre and gazed at a poster for a film-noirish sports (boxing) picture The Harder They Fall (1956) - noted as star Humphrey Bogart's final film role; Michel also looked dreamily in a glass display case at a picture of the film's star Humphrey Bogart, Michel's idol; he reverently and simply whispered "Bogey" as he mimed his hero, blew out wispy smoke from his cigarette, and again traced his thumb over both closed lips

Homage to 'Bogey'
The Harder They Fall (1956) - Humphrey Bogart Poster	Wisps of Cigarette Smoke	Thumb Moved Over Closed Lips

• after meeting up with Patricia - but broke without money and unable to go out to dinner with her, Michel entered a restaurant's restroom where he mugged a man and stole his money; when he returned to Patricia, he immediately asked: "Sleep with me tonight?"; to test and hint at Patricia, Michel told her about a newspaper article he had read about how a bus conductor confessed to his girlfriend that he was a "bad guy" who had stolen 5 million francs to impress and seduce her with a 3-day trip to the Riviera - and the girl then decided to become his criminal sidekick
• Patricia announced that she had forgotten that she had a press conference appointment with a journalist on the Champs-Elysees; after demanding to see her later that evening and getting rejected, Michel offered to give her a lift in his stolen convertible; during their aimless discussion in the car, the camera was positioned behind Patricia for nearly the entire sequence; multiple break-through jump cuts were inserted in the sequence; he kept pressuring to see her and make love and that he really needed her; when she asked: "Why are you so sad?", in a dramatic tone, he told her: "I can't do without you... Alas, alas, alas! I love a girl who has a nice neck, nice breasts, a nice voice, nice wrists, a nice forehead, nice knees. But she's such a coward!"; when she was dropped off, she kissed him on the cheek; as she walked away, he yelled at her: "Get lost, then! I never want to see you again. Get lost! Get lost, you creep!"
• after riding up the restaurant's escalator, Patricia met for dinner on an outside restaurant balcony in Montparnasse with a journalist; it was revealed that he was writing a book - and he presented it to her: ("This is the book I promised you"); he told her it was about a woman who died from an abortion after an unwanted pregnancy: "I hope that nothing happens to you like the woman in the book"; Patricia told him about her own personal unhappiness and search for meaning in life: "If I could dig a hole and hide in it, I would"; he responded: "You should be like an elephant. When they're sad, they vanish"; she told him (in English): "I don't know if I'm unhappy because I'm not free, or if I'm not free because I'm unhappy"; he responded by telling her about a friend's wishes - implying that he would like to ask her to sleep with him - and wondering if she felt the same way

Patricia's Dinner Meeting With Journalist

Patricia: ""If I could dig a hole and hide in it, I would"

Patricia Kissing the Journalist in His Car (as Michel Watched From Afar)

• they made plans to meet again the next afternoon at Orly Airport for an interview with novelist Parvulesco (film director Jean-Pierre Melville); Michel watched them from inside the restaurant as they left arm-in-arm, and he saw Patricia kiss the journalist in his convertible sports car before they drove off
• the next day, Patricia exited a city bus, played hopscotch with road markers, and admired her reflection in a storefront mirror; afterwards, as she entered her apartment building, she was surprised to find Michel there in her bed (he had entered after using her downstairs key); the next 23-minute scene was bursting with erotic energy between Patricia and Michel (a hallmark of spontaneous, meandering and improvisational acting/film-making as they chatted, flirted, smoked, and fought), often with wailing sirens heard through the open window and drowning out the character's dialogue

Making Three 'Faces' at Her

• she immediately complained: "You're crazy... I can never be alone when I want to be"; he made three goofy 'faces' at her - she duplicated his looks in front of her bathroom mirror; he returned the insult: "You're even crazier than me"; while looking at himself in a mirror, Michel told her: "I always fall for girls who aren't for me"; she told him to leave her alone, because she was thinking, but then told him: "I'm not thinking about anything. I'd like to think about something, but I can't seem to"; Michel expressed how he was jealous that she spent time with the journalist, but she defended herself: "I had to. He's getting me articles to write. It's really important to me"; when she was asked if she had sex with the journalist, she told Michel: "He said one day we'd sleep together, but not now"
• Michel kept insisting on making love to her: "I want to sleep with you again...It means I love you"; Patricia explained how she wasn't so sure of her love for him, as she hugged a teddy bear; Michel flipped through a magazine with black and white photographs of naked women: [Note: The cover revealed its title: "Photographing The Female Figure" by Bunny Yeager, a 1957 publication, although the pictures shown were from another publication]
• Michel expressed dissatisfaction that she wouldn't commit to him like so many other females: "A woman never wants to do in eight seconds what she'll want to do eight days later. Eight seconds or eight days, it's all the same. Why not eight centures?...A woman's all half-measures. It gets me down"; she explained how she wanted to first find out what she liked about him before sleeping with him again; she told how she was more romantically inclined: "I want us to be like Romeo and Juliet... You said last night you couldn't live without me, but you can. Romeo couldn't live without Juliet, but you can"; a picture of the two lovers hung on Patricia's wall
• Michel suggested a brutish, dangerous macabre game (of passion and violence) that he described: "Give me a smile...I'll count to 8. If by 8 you haven't smiled, I'll strangle you" - and she eventually smiled at 7 and 3/4ths; she slapped him when he pulled up the back of her skirt for a peek (later she told him he wasn't just looking at her legs); while smoking together, he asked if she ever thought about death; she challenged him to "say something nice," and asked him to consider where she should hang her Renoir poster in the bedroom; he kept demanding: "I want to sleep with you again because you're beautiful"; she proposed: "I'll stare at you until you stop staring at me" - he rubbed his thumb on his lips as he stared back; after viewing him through the rolled-up poster and creating a telescopic iris effect, they began to passionately kiss; he sensually touched her bottom in the bathroom where she was attempting to hang up her poster

Counting to 8 Game	Staring at Each Other
Viewing Him Through a Rolled Up Poster - Iris Effect

• in the bathroom next to the Renoir poster, she asked: "Think she's prettier than me?" - he replied: "When you're scared or surprised, or both at once, there's a funny glint in your eyes....I want to sleep with you again because of that glint"
• as she washed her feet and Michel pissed in the sink, she also divulged a possibility that she was bearing his child: "I'm pregnant, Michel" - when he asked if it was his, she replied: "I think so"; he blamed her: "You should've been more careful!" and scolded her: "Some idea, having a kid!"; he alternated between insulting her looks and personality and praising her for her charming, pretty self; in between, he again attempted to phone Berruti to collect on a debt but was unsuccessful; he also learned from Tolmachov that the police were after him
• he continued to insult and praise Patricia: "Take your clothes off...You Americans are so stupid"; he complained about not finding those who owed hm money: "I can't find the man who owes me money. What a pain!"; he rudely told her: "Quiet, I'm thinking" and shortly later asked: "In New York, did you sleep with a lot of men?"; she answered with seven fingers held up ("Not too many"), while he responded he had slept with 22 women ("Not so many either"); he then insulted the attractiveness of Swedish girls; from his experience, Michel thought that girls who were pretty and charming and rated 15 out of 20 could not be found in Rome, Rio or Paris but in Lausanne and Geneva
• Patricia attempted to assert her independence: "I'm scared, because I want you to love me, but at the same time, I want you to stop loving me. I'm very independent, you know"; he answered her: "I love you, but not the way you think"; she felt that he was hard to read and enigmatic: "I want to know what's behind your face. I've looked at it for 10 minutes, and I still know nothing, nothing. I'm not sad, I'm scared"; he called her "sweet and gentle," but then insulted her again as: "cruel, stupid, heartless, pathetic, cowardly, despicable"
• to distract him from wanting to take her top off, Patricia wished to discuss her favorite book written by novelist William Faulkner, Wild Palms - and read an excerpt (in English and French): "Between grief and nothing, I will take grief"; when asked which he preferred, Michel answered: "Grief's stupid. I'd choose nothing. It's not better, but grief's a compromise. I want all or nothing"; the two also playfully hid under the sheet as Patricia described them: "We're hiding like happy elephants"; shortly later after love-making (off-screen), he asked: "Was it good?"; after dressing to go out, she asked about which part he liked the most: her eyes, mouth, or shoulders, but Michel didn't respond
• while sitting in an outdoor cafe, Michel ran off to steal another car (a US-made Ford Thunderbird convertible) and drove Patricia to her NY Herald Tribune office and dropped her off for a brief visit; then, he bought a newspaper from a sidewalk vendor, realizing that the headlines were proclaiming: "Police Killer Still at Large"; a suspicious, pipe-smoking bystander, identified as the Snitch (or Informer) in the credits (director Jean Luc-Godard) recognized Michel and reported him driving off with Patricia on the way to her interview at the Orly Airport - with a closing iris

Michel Identified and Pointed Out by a Bystander - the Snitch (Director Jean Luc-Godard)

• at the event on the open-air deck of the Orly Airport, trendy Italian novelist Parvulesco, author of Candida, was being questioned by a group of admiring journalists, with questions about differences in romantic attitudes between American and French women, questions of gender, the issue of eroticism vs. romantic love, the existence of the soul, and womens' role in modern society; the writer stated that men only wanted women, while women only wanted money; to Patricia's question about his greatest ambition (asked twice), the writer answered: "To become immortal and then die"
• meanwhile, Michel (using the alias name Laszlo Kovacs) attempted to sell the stolen Ford convertible at a car lot, but was told by the uncooperative and suspicious dealer that he wouldn't pay out 800,000 francs until the following week, due to his picture in the newspaper as a wanted man ("You don't get the money now"); the distributor cap was removed from the car to make it inoperative, forcing Michel to hire a taxi to pick up Patricia at the airport; as they rode in the taxi, Michel told Patricia he had experienced a car accident and his vehicle was damaged; the taxi briefly stopped at Antonio Berruti's place, but Michel learned that he had already left 5 minutes earlier
• the two exited the taxi (without paying the fare) and ended up on the Champs-Elysee where Patricia split off from Michel and walked on foot into her NY Herald Tribune office; she was approached and questioned by Inspector Vital (Daniel Boulanger) about wanted murderer Michel, pictured in the newspaper; at first Patricia told him that she didn't know Michel, but was then warned about feigning ignorance: "Careful little girl, don't mess with the Paris police"; she soon admitted that she met Michel three weeks earlier in Nice during a holiday, and that he "came to Paris to see someone who owes him money" - an Italian; after Vital applied pressure via threats of passport and work permit problems, she agreed to cooperate further - and call them
• outside the office, Michel watched the two police detectives as he hid behind a newspaper; Patricia motioned to Michel that there was a manhunt for him and that she was being followed; they walked at a discreet distance from each other toward a crowd of people on the Champs-Elysees watching a parade for President Eisenhower (and Charles DeGaulle) preceded by a contingent of motorcycle police; Patricia attempted to hide in a dark movie theatre playing an American film noir thriller, director Otto Preminger's crime drama Whirlpool (1950) starring Gene Tierney - the film replicated her frantic predicament of an innocent woman on the run; she then retreated into the theatre's bathroom and emerged outdoors where she met up with Michel; she asked him: "Was that what you meant by double or nothing?"

Patricia and Michel Meeting Up on the Street

Kissing in the Dark in a Second Movie Theatre

Leaving the Movie Theatre

• she suggested that they hide in a second movie theatre to watch Budd Boetticher's western Westbound (1958) together; they kissed each other in the dark - in giant close-up - as the film's faux voice-over dialogue noted: "Your tale is noble and tragic. Like the mask of a tyrant. No drama so perilous or magnetic. No detail can make our love pathetic" [Note: The dialogue was a collage of two poems: Louis Aragon's "Elsa Je T'aime" and Guillaume Apollinaire's "Cors de Chasse (Hunting Horns)"]
• after leaving the theatre, they drove off in another of Michel's stolen cars when she read in a recently-purchased newspaper from a drugstore that the cops were after him; he responded when she asked about how he was reportedly a married man: "That was ages ago. She was crazy. She dumped me, or I dumped her. I can't remember"; he was resigned to being followed and pursued: "Informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, lovers love"; Michel realized that they must switch cars again to avoid detection, and he stole a Cadillac Eldorado from a garage; as Patricia drove away with the car, Michel asked if she was scared and she replied: "It's too late to be scared"; a rotating newsfeed on the side of a building forecast: "POLICE CLOSING IN ON MICHEL POICCARD"
• Michel continued his pursuit of petty crook Antonio to collect on his debt, and found the blackmailer in a restaurant in Montparnasse - and he finally paid up; they then sought refuge in an apartment recommended by Antonio, where a professional photo-shoot was in progress of a swimsuit model; the next morning after staying the night (Patricia bemoaned the fact that "sleeping together" actually separated them), she left to purchase a newspaper and bottle of milk; as she walked by a newspaper stand (with a sign reading: "Vendredi jour de chance” (Friday Lucky Day)) - the vendor shouted out for her to buy a lottery ticket: "It's your lucky day, take a ticket" [Note: it was an ironic foreshadowing of a very "unlucky day" - the day of her Judas-like betrayal of Michel and his subsequent death]; she entered a streetside establishment and ordered a coffee when whiskey wasn't available
• after having covered for Michel when earlier asked by the authorities about his whereabouts, Patricia realized that Michel's capture was imminent; she ultimately decided to phone the Inspector to betray Michel's location to the police: "I've just seen the man you're looking for"
• shortly after returning, she told Michel who was still pressuring her to go to Rome, that she couldn't join him; while pacing in the room, she confessed that she had reported his location to the police, to betray him and to remain independent: "I don't want to go with you....I don't want to be in love with you. That's why I called the police. I stayed with you to see if I was in love with you. Or if I wasn't in love with you. And since I'm being cruel to you, it proves I'm not in love with you...Now you have no choice but to go"; Michel was upset with her: "They say there's no happy love... You're out of your mind. That's a pathetic way to reason. You're like those women who sleep with everyone, except the one man who loves them, saying it's because they sleep with everyone"; she encouraged him to leave and admitted: "Why don't you go? I've slept with lots of boys. Don't count on me. Just go, why wait?"; Michel was convinced that he had to give himself up: ("I'm in bad shape. Anyway, I want to go to jail. Nobody will talk to me. I can look at the walls")
• Michel told Antonio when he drove up and handed him a briefcase full of money: "Cops are coming. The American girl grassed on me"; Antonio encouraged him to flee, but Michel insisted on staying: "I've had enough. I'm tired, I want to sleep...Damn the police, I'll save my neck. I shouldn't be thinking of her but I can't help it"
• in the ending (filmed with a hand-held camera), as the police pulled up, Michel picked up Antonio's automatic weapon that was thrown onto the street; gunfire lethally wounded him as he jogged down a street holding his bloody lower back (with Patricia pursuing and running after him) [Note: This death scene directly referenced a similar scene in Anthony Mann's western Man of the West (1958).]
• after a long tracking shot, Michel collapsed from his wounds near the middle of an intersection cross-walk (a symbol of the Calvary 'cross'?); after he took a last puff on his cigarette with his last breath, the distressed Patricia and detectives ran up to his body and surrounded him; she placed one hand over most of her face and looked down at him; after making grotesque and grimacing faces (imitating the three 'faces' they had made earlier in her apartment), he uttered these last icy words to her: (there are many different translated versions of the French phrase: "C'est pas vraiment degueulasse"): "Makes me want to puke" or "You're a real louse (creep, scumbag, or bitch)" or possibly: "I am a real creep"; he then covered his own face and closed his eyes with his hand - and then expired

The Shoot-Out Ending: Michel's Death
Patricia Pursuing Michel Down the Street	Last Dying Breath - A Puff on His Cigarette	Surrounded by Detectives and Patricia
Patricia Covering Her Face	Looking Up at Patricia and Making Three Faces	Michel: "You are a real creep" (or "It's really disgusting")

• there were various translations of the final four lines of dialogue between Michel, Patricia, and Police Inspector Vital

• Patricia asked Vital: "What did he say?" just before he died; she was told: "He said you make him want to puke" (or she made him feel nauseated, disgusted, or sick: "He said you're a real creep (or bitch)" or "He said you're a real scumbag" or "He said you're a real louse")
• in the ending, she stared directly at the camera and responded by imitating Michel, but again asking impassively what the words meant: "What's that mean, puke?" (or "What's a 'creep'?" "What's a 'louse'?" or "'A little what?' I don't understand"); she seemed to have misunderstood Michel's last words; she ran her thumb across her upper lower lip (from right to left and around her lower lip) - adopting Michel's Bogart gesture; she then abruptly turned around - from the camera, audience, everyone, and the film ended with blackness