Breathless (1959)

Introduction

French New Wace is a film movement started in 1959 with Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard. French New Wave break all the traditional path and follow the literature. This film movement ended in 1969 because the form of cinema has embedded into mainstream and developed their own styles.

Theory Discussion

A group of film lover watched many previously unreleased movies but they unable to get into French commercial cinema. Therefore, they turned to theory and critism becoming critics and theorists. They created their own criteria which is very different compare with traditional film path. There are three principles held at Cahiers du Cinema. Firstly, rejects montage aesthetics, favouring mise-en-scene. They think that films should not just be rational experiences but can be include emotional and psychological experiences. Secondly, the ideology of personal authorship is the “Policy of Authors” claims that a film should be a medium of personal artistic expression and it can represent a filmmaker’ signature style, personality. One of the founders Truffaut rejects heavy emphasis on plots and dialogue, preferring visual aesthetics mise-en-scene.

First of all, the filmmaker like to uses direct sound from the filming site. Therefore, the French New Wave will record some of the noise such as people are talking on the street. The director also like to location shooting such as shooting at the streets to show the realistic of a film. To emphasize the aesthetics mise-en-scene the filmmaker also use the available light and will not purposely use extra lighting technique. 

Besides, self-reflexivity also known as meta-cinema to make audiences realize that they are watching a film. For example this theory uses a lot of jump cuts in a movie. The filmmaker also like to uses handheld cinematography when shooting a film.

 In the acting part , plots and dialogue are improvised to the actors for example the director will told the actors what topic they have to bring to but did not provide the script to them. The purpose is to let the actors to talk over each other’s lines to reflect real-life conversations. They also like to use long takes in a scene when the characters are talking to each other.

Furthermore, the characters of French New Wave usually are marginalized, lonely and anti-heroes. They are with no family ties and behave very immoral and rude to show as anti-authoritarian.

Synopsis

This story start from a guy who name Michel stealing a car in Marseille. Michel shoot a policeman who want to catch him. After that he quickly run away, and found one of his lover who name Patricia is selling the New York Herald Tribune at the Paris streets. Patricia questioned by the policeman when she is working and she knows that Michel is a criminal. Patricia choose to escape from Michel, he don’t want to run away with Michel. At the end of the movie, Patricia called police and the police arrive the studio and shoot Michel.

Analysis

Breathless is the representative film of French New Wave, we can found a lot of  French New Wave filmic style in this movie. Firstly, we can notice that the filmmaker is using handheld cinematography to shoot this film. One of the very obvious scenes is when Michel and Patricia are walking at the Paris street and talking to each other. We can clearly see that the filmmaker is following their step and the camera is shaking. Besides of handheld cinematography, filmmaker uses the long takes on this scene to record the conversation between Michel and Patricia.

When come to the conversation between Michel and Patricia. There are no dialogues provided to the actors they have to act like how their talk in real life. The film do not have a very strict plot what the film should be like. We can also notice this acting when they are walking at the Paris street because they talk a lot unrelated topic. The actor also had say something to help the actor back to the topic when someone do not what to talk.

Moreover, the characters in “Breathless” are marginalized for example Michel do not have family ties. Michel also behave very immorally such as simply stole someone car and throw the rubbish from the video. In this movie, he like to do what he want and do not consider the consequences. There are no such a “good person” in the movie because the character in film is anti-heroes and loners.

Conclusion

Breathless is a very famous representative film of French New Wave not only because of it is the first film of French New Wave. It is because this film applied the technique of French New Wave for example like handheld cinematography, improvised dialogues and plot, the marginalized personality. In my opinion, this is a very good contribution to filmmaker to nowadays.

References:

“What Is the French New Wave?” Indie Film Hustle, 30 May 2018, indiefilmhustle.com/french-new-wave/.

“FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT - French New Wave Director.” New Wave Film.com | French New Wave / Nouvelle Vague and International Cinema of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/francois-truffaut.shtml.

Parnell, Lindsay. “The French New Wave: Revolutionising Cinema.” Culture Trip, 23 Oct. 2012, theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/the-french-new-wave-revolutionising-cinema/.