Old French Film: Breathless (1959)

Like previous films, this week movie still remained black and white. Breathless, an old French Film which released in 1959 and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. What surprising me was the director of this movie was actually the main actor for this film. After watching two black and white film, I learnt a lot and I am excited to see what is going to learn in Breathless.

Synopsis
     In the beginning of the story, there was a young man, Michel who was youthful criminal. He stole a car in Marseille and two policemen were following him since they suspected the stolen was drove by Michel. So, Michel tried to find place to hide from policemen but one of them found him near roadside. Then, he tried to escape from the police by killing him and ran away from the crime scene. In order to making the scene clear, he tried to push the police down to downhill so nobody would found the dead body. After that, he got helped from Patrica who worked as selling newspaper on the street in Paris. Patrica found that Michel was someone who cannot trusted due to he left her behind when questioned by police. At the end, she betrayed him and what will happened to Michel? Will he survived from police and escape to Italy? 

Theory Discussion

Frech New Wave (FNW)
     For FNW, it is started from 1959 until 1969 and the founder was the director and actor of this movie. Before 1950s and 1960s, most of the films were in high cost pay and big budget. From the book Cinema Studies: The Key Concept by Susan with page 166 and line 23-25, she mentioned that this term refers to films made by new generation of French filmmakers which were low-budget and every scene looked simple. Therefore, people started to use FNW to save budget in order to produce a movie.

     For example, there was a scene covered most of the length of the scene which was Michel and Patrica in the apartment. Although this scene was boring, the purpose of making this scene was not only save the budget but also tried to let the audience to enjoy the love moment between Michel and Patrica which was romance in single word. 


     Furthermore, FNW opposed the traditions of films which means they tried something new rather than keep on using the old style in making film. For an old film, the characters usually waited each other finished their dialogue then only continue the next script that they are going to say. However, FNW rejected using this because they felt that this kind of performance was not so real compared acting with improvise dialogues and talk over each other's line to reflect real-life conversation. 


     Nevertheless, self-reflexivity can also be called meta-cinema. It is very important for FNW because it constantly reminds audiences that they are watching a film but not think of they are the character inside the movie. To make this out, jumpcuts and actor's monologues were used to get attention from the audience. 



     Besides this, the characters in FNW are often marginalized who behaved immorally because they want to be different from other tradition of films so that their movie get more attention compare to old films. For example, women in FNW were given strong characteristics instead of weak side in the film like what Breathless did where Patrica betrayed Michel. In Algeria or Indo-China, there is a ideology of caring politics and it stressed out as disillusionment with oversea policy.      



Reason for hating FNW
     There are some reason which made me hated the FNW. First of all, most of the scenes were took in same place like what I mentioned before such as the apartment. I was okay at the beginning of 5 minutes but I felt sleepy after 5 minutes passed. This is because I think that love scene should not be more than 5 minutes unless they are going to change place.

     However, it still can be remained the apartment scene if they try to add something like someone knock the door and maybe they enjoy the meal together. These are the scenes that can add for this movie to improve the level of romance. 

     Next, I hated FNW is because of the scenes are usually considered as long takes which means if something wrong such as noise and unexpected incident like technical problem; the scenes need to retake again and it was not low budget if need to retake the scene by using the new tape to shoot the scenes. 

Conclusion

     Finally, I loved the movie how simple content it was. Although it was boring when it comes to apartment scene, I think that that is the part which save a lot of cost for the movie. I am very happy to see the evolution of the old film like Breathless did which showed creativity and new of making the film.



References
S.Hayward (2013), Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, Fourth Edition, Routledge, London and New York