Audient Audit: Breathless

This is the eighth in my 2019 series Audient Audit, in which I'm checking the accuracy of my own records on films I say I've seen.

The first clue that I had not, in fact, seen Jean-Luc Godard's classic film Breathless (1960) was that I had no idea it was a film noir. It may not be a conventional noir, but it fits loosely into that category. If you asked me to summarize Breathless, I probably wouldn't have been able to, but I would have considered it a lot closer to something like Jules and Jim than to, I don't know, The Big Sleep. So it didn't take long for me to determine that I had added this to my lists of films seen in error.

So why did I think I'd seen Breathless?

There's a good chance I saw at least one scene from it, once. I remember a tangible sense of frustration related to this movie, because at the time I saw whatever percentage I saw of it, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate what it was doing. In truth, I still don't appreciate Godard all that much, though I'll get to the exceptions to that in a minute. But I'm guessing that if I did see a scene in it, I saw the extended scene where the two leads are rolling around in bed and talking about life and love. I liked those scenes okay now, but at the time I would have once seen them, at least 20 and probably more like 25 years ago, I wouldn't have liked them at all.

The funny thing is that I have a very specific image of a scene I associate with Breathless, and it is simply not in the movie. I don't know, maybe it's in the Richard Gere remake, though I'm quite certain I haven't seen much or likely any of that. I have this image in my mind of Jean-Paul Belmondo's character seducing Jean Seberg's character while she's lying on a diving board next to a pool. Nope. Not in the movie.

The thing that's so surprising about this story being fairly plot heavy, relative to what I was expecting, is that its lack of plot would have been one of my chief complaints about it ... and therefore has been, all this time, an imaginary chief complaint. In fact, I had no idea that Belmondo's Michel is wanted for murder, a murder he actually committed by shooting a police officer. I "remembered" the cigarettes he smokes incessantly, an affectation that still kind of bothers me, not because I'm some prude, but just because I think it's a pretty artificial attempt at seeming "cool." I didn't remember that he's a wanted criminal, and that's because, well, I never actually saw the movie.

Michel models his own persona on that of Humphrey Bogart, so I'm wondering if what percentage of this movie I did see also contributes to why I don't like Bogart that much. Kind of working this out as I type this, but French opinions of what's cool and what isn't cool don't align that much with my own. They worship Bogart, and I don't care much for him. They think womanizing is fab, and that's just not my style. And maybe I think Godard embodies this just as much as Belmondo does.

That said, there were enough things that I liked about the film that I can mostly co-sign its reputation. One of those is Jean Seberg, a personality who is kind of unknown to me. Reading up on her, I can see that this film helped make her an icon, and perhaps contributed to her early demise (suicide) at age 40. Although I was a bit distracted by her American accent while speaking French -- I don't like the French, but I also don't like when people who aren't French attempt to be French? -- I do find that she has a star presence and an iconic look, one that reminded me a bit of Mia Farrow before Mia Farrow.

I also enjoy the ways Godard is playing with editing here, particularly in shots of Seberg riding in Belmondo's convertible. We get one line of dialogue being delivered in little bursts, and with each burst Seberg's background changes. It's a cool effect and was probably pretty groundbreaking at the time. As this is a far more linear film than some Godard would go on to make, I appreciate it for its comparative restraint. He was probably a better filmmaker (in my opinion) before he figured out quite all the tricks he could do. Then again, I have to say I have only seen a handful of his films. Until I've seen more, I should probably keep my opinions to myself.

I'm uncomfortable with what I said about not liking the French. It's not true. However, I do think there are elements of the French New Wave that have bothered me when they have made it into other films later on, maybe some of the earliest films of Jim Jarmusch. To put it kind of broadly, I don't love films where men sit around apartments in wife beaters smoking cigarettes and exorcising their love-hate relationships with women. I feel like Godard is kind of responsible for birthing this. So while I don't like some of what Godard wrought, I can appreciate this early example of it for what it is.

I bet I'd find the Gere remake really annoying though.

September brings another movie. "Really Vance? You don't say."