I decided to review Breathless today, after noticing that most people who found my site on a search engine, found it through my review of Contempt. While Contempt comes across as being the far more interesting movie on first glance, I could talk for hours about Breathless.... but I'll try and make it shorter than that.

Breathless is Godard's first major film, and set off something of an earthquake in the world of cinema. Both technically and in its attitude the film is unprecedented, to the extent that we can say the title of the film refers to both the style it was shot in, and the actions of the character.

Technically, it does not seem as groundbreaking at first glance as it really is, but I think it is clear on close glance that few movies can really duplicate what Godard is doing in this film (and most of those movies are also made by Godard). He said that a goal of his while making this film was to give the impression that editing had just been invented. The editing, while looking 'wrong' to anyone who is used to standard classical editing styles, is strangely compelling. Time speeds up or slows down depending on the attitudes of the characters, you are given the impression of an event instead of the reconstruction of an event (by which I mean, there is a lot of jump cutting).

Besides giving the overall impression that the characters really are breathless, this plays into the real purpose of the film, it's kind of explosion into the real world (a more "academicy" term would be the destruction of textuality). The film is famous for being the first film that was intensely self referential (I'm sure some of you dorks out there are thinking about Melies and the cinema of attractions, but we both know that's something different), the main character regularly talks to the camera when he is alone, and he is also obsessed with cinema (primarily Humphrey Bogart). Meaning that the audience is in the film (the main character talks to us), and the main character is outside of the film (he is a film spectator). The barrier between the artistic creation and real life is effectively broken.

Of course, this is taking the standard reading of the film a bit farther than most people would care to take it (the standard reading is that reflexivity is used to comment on the impact of film/ideology on the characters life, which I would argue is true of Terrance Malick's Badlands, but not true here). The reason why I would argue that this is a merging of fact and fiction, and not just a formalist/Brechtian technique used to move from entertainment into "issues," is because it is clear from later films of Godard's (particularly Bande a Part, and Pierrot Le Fou), that 'the world of cinema' was a positive thing for Godard at this time (though he would change his mind in the 70s, I've heard a number of arguments that he changed his mind back in the 80s). The world of film is, in Breathless, a world of possibility, where running from the police, pregnancy, and even death, are not big enough threats to keep two lovers from going on an adventure together, one where they are always a step ahead of the cops, until they betray each other.

I regularly argue that all film is about love, and it is films like Breathless that make me argue this. Brecht said, quite famously, that "food is the first thing, morals follow after." In cinema love is the first thing. Love simply defined as an irrational sense of wonder when faced with another human being, that arouses the desire within oneself to perform feats of magic. That I think is the simplest definition of love, and explains the whole experience of cinema, from concept to spectatorship better than any other explanation. Under this definition Godard has always been the best filmmaker in dealing with issues of love, and this is where he got his start.

Buy Breathless here

Though there are a lot of reasons to watch La Jetée, (it's a good movie), this is one of the few times where it can legitimately be said that the film is worth watching for the sake of a single shot.

The shot is simple. It is a shot of a woman who is lying in bed, she is lying still, and only lightly breathing. What makes the shot stand out, is that it is the only shot in the entire movie that is moving; besides this shot La Jetée is composed entirely of still photographs, and when you come to this shot the movement is barely visible. You have to strain to tell whether the woman is actually moving or you just imagined it.

The point of La Jetée is in this one shot. The sterility of the future world, the impending death of the main character, and the idea of falling in love with a living world. This one image, more then any other cinematic image I have ever seen, leaves you with the overwhelming impression of life.

The day you see your first Godard film is always a life changing day. Though this is undoubtedly true of the day I watched Contempt back in my Sophmore year of college, I would have much rather my first experience with Godard be Band of Outsider or Pierrot le Fou.

My reason is one that many people might not agree with. While I am firmly of the belief that all cinema has a real association with love, the purpose of Contempt is the opposite, to inspire a lack of love, to inspire an unforgivable lack of feeling towards the characters in the film. It accomplishes this quite well, making the film hard to watch but unquestionably brilliant.

Like most of Godard's films (if not all), Contempt is a film about film. Not only are the main characters a scriptwriter, a producer, and a director, but the film makes you aware of the camera from the beginning. The first shot has the two lovers of the story talking in bed, with Bridgette Bardot naked above the covers, the lens filter changes several times in the scene, constantly casting the shot in different colors.

The most striking scene in the film, is the argument the couple has in their apartment. The apartment is only half completed and looks sort of like a film set. As the tension builds up Godard breaks more and more cinematic rules (most noticeably he cuts cross the 180 degree line quite a few times), which catapults the tension into the final breakdown, when the couple's polite argument ends with Bardot telling her boyfriend that it isn't that she has stopped loving him, its that she holds total contempt for him.

The easiest way for this film to be read is as a critique of the place of women in visual culture, similar to the arguments made ten years later by Laura Mulvey in her essay "Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema," or by John Berger in the book "Ways of Seeing." Unfortunately just because that's the easiest way to read the film does not make it the correct way to read the film, and I think if we look at where it is in Godard's canon this interpretation really does not even make sense.

Instead I would argue that he plays on the contrast between the film industry and the things that it is filming. Those living things under the camera, and the business of making money off of them. The main crime of the man who is hated in this film is to get more wrapped up in the making of a Hollywood film with a sleazy producer, then he is in inspiring passion in Bridget Bardot (I was going to say "his girlfriend" but I think if your girlfriend is Bridget Bardot she is in her own category). He thinks that she has stopped loving him because she erroneously thought he wanted her to sleep with the producer, but she responds that it is just because he cannot inspire feelings in her anymore (the exact quote is quite nice, but I forget what it is). The point being, that the problem is not that she is being objectified, it is that she is not being objectified in the way one looks at an object of love, as something different from you, and slightly magical, not as the third party to a business negotiation.

The reason I am almost sure this argument is right, is because of Godard's relationship with Anna Karina at this time (the film was made in 1963). In any film with Anna Karina in it - lets say from Vivre Sa Vie (1962) to Pierrot Le Fou (1965) - Godard finds a way to tell the audience everything he likes about this woman, her legs, her eyes, the way she walks, talks dances, Godard tries to point to all the reasons he enjoys watching her, and likewise you enjoy watching her, or watching her being watched by Godard. Watching someone is something you do with a person you love, not a person you do not value.

You want desperately to love both these characters, but Godard refuses to let either of them insight your passion.

Buy Contempt