Jean-Luc Godard: Breathless

To backtrack one step, I want to lay out a snapshot of Godard's first feature film, À bout de souffle / Breathless (1960; US release, 1961).  First, the movie itself as a text. It revolves mostly around two characters: Michel Poiccard  (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a petty hoodlum and scoundrel, and Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg), an American living and working at miscellaneous jobs in Paris, intent on studying at the Sorbonne. Michel needs money, he is owed money, and he is pursued for having killed a motorcycle patrolman while on the way to Paris after stealing a car in Marseille. Having previously hooked up briefly with Patricia, once back in Paris he tries to expand on their earlier encounter and coax her away to Italy. That's the basic setup. We see a lot of naturally lit Parisian urbanscapes in black and white and a lot of deft hand-held camera work by Raoul Coutard, Godard's cinematographer; there are many jump cuts in evidence. 

What I usually find with Breathless is an initial aversion to the two main characters, or at least to Michel, but by the time he's hanging out with Patricia in her little longterm hotel room, everything comes together beautifully. I don't know exactly why it always seems to work that way, but it does. Which brings us to some snippets of the film's dialogue, all delivered by Patricia (Jean Seberg, pictured above) except for where noted.

The French always say one second when they mean five minutes.

[Michel]: Where we going?  [Patricia]: Anywhere. The Latin Quarter.

Soon means soon.

Enough games for today.

Do you prefer records or the radio?

I’m very independent, you know.

But you don’t know what I think, you don’t know.

I want to know what’s behind your face. I’ve looked at it for ten minutes and I still know nothing.

Say what you like, I don’t care. I’ll put all this in my book.

Do you know William Faulkner’s The Wild Palms? Listen. The last section is beautiful. "Between grief and nothing, I will take grief." Which would you choose?

We look each other in the eyes, but what for?

So that’s that.

[The Writer,  Parvulesco (Jean-Pierre Melville)]: Two things matter in this life. For men, it’s women, and for women, money.

[Patricia]: Why bother writing? To have money and not rely on men.



Today's Rune: Joy