BREATHLESS: THE INDEFINABLE FILM
OUR RATING FOR BREATHLESS: ✰✰✰✰✰
“Godard’s Breathless is more than a mere inversion of the Hollywood film noir genre. This film structurally creates for itself a language of dissonance through paradoxes which are never resolved in the film; the nonsensical cuts and the indefinable male protagonist that appears to have certain traits only for them to be refuted are themes which persist throughout the film and challenge the audience to resist assumptions of the ability to define a “norm” within which films may be neatly arranged.”
Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless is a film driven by a series of paradoxes which appear to present mainstream film elements yet subvert them throughout. Godard’s use of key imagery and character traits from the Hollywood film noir genre to create an internal dissonance by visually, such as the lighting of Michel, representing the inverted Hollywood film noir protagonist, and using jarring cuts to disorient the viewer, revitalizes film noir and creates a new gangster film.
The character of Michel is a direct reference to the archetypal Hollywood film noir male protagonist: he is dressed in a fedora and suit; smokes constantly; provides narration; mistreats women, as made apparent by his calling two female hitchhikers “dogs;” engages in “tough guy” banter, exemplified by the blatantly sexual conversation he has with Patricia, his femme fatale counterpart, on the street as she tries to sell newspapers; and steals throughout the film. While Michel exhibits these traits which initially seem to categorise him as a mainstream Hollywood character, Godard challenges this characterisation through mise-en-scène and negating his protagonist’s overtly masculine dialogue by making him vulnerable visually and in his discourse with the quintessential femme fatale. During the scene in which Michel speaks with Patricia as she tries to sell newspapers, the power assigned to the Hollywood film noir male protagonist is given to the woman; even before Michel engages in conversation with Patricia, he has already been disempowered because of how the conversation is begun: Godard chose to have Michel look for Patricia in multiple places until finally finding her, rather than have the female chase after the male’s attention.
This dynamic continues throughout and is made increasingly prominent as Michel and Patricia’s conversation progresses. Although the conversation is begun with Michel belittling Patricia publicly, socially, and sexually by forcing the topic of sex into the dialogue as she attempts to work, the formation of the strong, misogynistic male archetype is subverted when Godard has Michel talk about his feelings, a subject about which Patricia has no interest in speaking. In having Michel harass Patricia with incessant declarations of love, which continue throughout the film, and speak about his sadness, Michel loses the film noir male protagonist categorisation. This paradox of the sensitive gangster created for the viewer is extremely difficult to reconcile and insists in the duration of the scene as in the rest of the film; soon after Michel acts as the antithesis of the mainstream Hollywood criminal, Godard again disrupts the audience’s attempt to label Michel as either being film noir or anti-film noir when he finishes the conversation with Michel stating in an authoritative and suddenly masculine tone that he has to find someone who owes him money, reintroducing Michel as the fearsome and forceful man character.
Godard further argues against film noir’s governing male protagonist in a verbal, and visual, contradiction through Patricia’s stealing of Michel’s narration. The majority of Breathless, as with mainstream film noir, is dominated by Michel’s narration of the events which take place; at the ending of the film, as Michel speaks, Patricia begins to narrate for the audience and delivers her internal monologue as the camera follows her and ignores Michel, the first instance in which this occurs in the film during a scene including Michel. This rejection of the male protagonist, which would not occur in mainstream film noir, further disempowers and dissociates Michel from not only being a gangster, but as a male character in film. Visually, Godard distances Michel from the film noir male protagonist characterisation by keeping him well-lit throughout the film. While in mainstream film noir, the visage of all of the characters, especially the male protagonist, are marred by shadow, Michel is constantly illuminated.
Furthermore, since Godard subjects his other characters to darkness, Michel appears vulnerable in comparison to his counterparts in this film; other characters in Breathless are allowed to hide visually through the shadows while Michel is unable to do so, akin to the powerlessness Godard verbally represented through Michel’s conversations with Patricia.
The final way in which Michel as a character is robbed of power and dignity is the final scene, in which he dies. When Michel is shot by the police, Godard films Michel running, injured, away from the police while Patricia runs after him. In showing the viewer only Michel in one frame then only Patricia as she runs after him and never together creates a haunting power dynamic; by filming them both separately, Godard defines visually the person who is running away and the person who chases them relentlessly, rather than making it appear as though Patricia and Michel are running together as equals by putting them together in the frame. In making this impactful decision, Godard characterises Patricia as the hunter and Michel as the hunted, wounded animal which cannot comprehend its inability to physically run from death. The visual emasculating of a potential film noir protagonist is further impressed upon the viewer when Godard films Michel lying on the ground on his back overhead with the police and Patricia’s feet encircling him, their bodies thereby being made to seem indomitable by comparison then finishing the film with Patricia speaking and looking directly into the camera, reclaiming the film from Michel, the now forcibly removed rival protagonist.
A major paradox to Breathless is its presentation to the audience of what would structurally appear to be a mainstream film noir in that the major features of the film are centralised around a gangster, money, and a femme fatale, while visually, it is a totally unique departure from the genre to the extent that it transcends the categorisation. A radical component of the filming of Breathless is that the camera is at eye-level with its characters for most of the film; rather than physically moving the camera by utilising high- or low-angle shots to set the tone of a scene, Godard instead uses jarring and sudden cuts to create motion in the film. This is best exemplified by scenes which take place in a car. In the beginning scene of the film, in which Michel drives the stolen car along a road flanked by trees, and during the nighttime scene towards the end of the film in which Michel and Patricia converse in another stolen car, for instance, the audience is confronted with an unsettling dissonance: while the car continues to move forward, as does the narration or conversation, without interruption, the background as a result of the cuts, stutters and changes abruptly. This in itself creates another paradox embedded in this film: the logical nature of physical and verbal forward movement contrasted against an illogical background of the unexpected disruption of the also assumed forward moving scenery.
Godard’s Breathless is more than a mere inversion of the Hollywood film noir genre. This film structurally creates for itself a language of dissonance through paradoxes which are never resolved in the film; the nonsensical cuts and the indefinable male protagonist that appears to have certain traits only for them to be refuted are themes which persist throughout the film and challenge the audience to resist assumptions of the ability to define a “norm” within which films may be neatly arranged. These individual incongruences throughout the film parallel the overall contradictory nature of Breathless being mainstream film noir while being something entirely dissimilar and indefinable.
Bibliography
Godard, Jean-Luc, director. Breathless. 1960.
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