A Fight With Souffle

Dan Hudak at the movies

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Film, like any other artistic medium, has gone

through various phases of creative techniques in its

brief history, all having some impact on the way films

made today. The ‘French New Wave’ is an example

of this. It began to take form in the late fifties,

its motivation being to break away from narrative

storytelling in film and to create a new form of

audio-visual language. Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout de

Souffle (Breathless) in many ways epitomizes

the ideas of the ‘New Wave’ genre, and is a

fascinating character study of human behavior. It

follows an amoral young thug, Michel Poiccard

(Jean-Paul Belmondo) on the run with his girlfriend,

Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) after shooting a

policeman.

One aspect of visual style that differs from

other Hollywood productions is the fluctuating

mise-en-scene, in this sense referring to the editing

of the film and the way it flows from scene to scene.

Some shots are cut very quickly, literally jumping

from one part of the scene to another without any

continuity to bridge them together. In one instance, a shot goes

directly from a flowerpot to a close-up of the characters’

faces, then back to a long shot of them all

within a matter of seconds. The close-ups here are

the key; the intensity of their faces and they way

they look into each other's eyes show a deep

emotional involvement, then the long shot echoes their

mental distance while showing them physically

together. The film similarly makes use of sequences where

cuts are made so quickly that we see the same image numerous

times from different angles, as though things are

happening ultra fast forcing even the protagonists to

struggle for a grasp on the situation. This shows

an intense dissension in the balance of their

relationship that would not be realized through standard editing.

Other scenes run for minutes at a time,

including one toward the middle of the film that lasts nearly half an hour (though

not entirely uncut) with Michel and Patricia casually

lying in bed. The

scene's patience effectively adds a sense of moral

ambiguity to Michel’s character. This in-depth

conversation about life and their relationship forces

the audience to relate to him as a human being who

simply has done some bad things. By seeing more than

his ‘bad’ side the audience begins to care about what

will become of him and temporarily disavows the

premonition of knowing he will be killed in the end

because he is the ‘bad’ guy. This also introduces the

idea of a 'tragic hero', something American films of

the late sixties (Bonnie and Clyde, Midnight Cowboy)

would thrive with.

These editing techniques are standard in today's

movies. It has grown to be part of a normal cinematic experience, just as montage did in the twenties, another example of evolution in film technique.

The French New Wave faded throughout the sixties, its

writers and directors continuing to make movies but in

a different vein. Sometimes it's fun to go back and

look at the origins of something, and Breathless is

one of the first precursors of the great visual language

of film, the influence of which is still apparent in

today's cinema.