"A bout de souffle" and the french new wave

Résumé du document

A Bout de Souffle/Breathless was created in 1958 by Jean-Luc Godard, a French director who belonged to the New Wave movement. This film was considered as one of the masterpiece of the cinematographic trend, along with other works by Truffaut (Les 400 Coups), Chabrol (Les Cousins) or Resnais (Hiroshima Mon Amour), and thus it illustrates the characteristics of this movement as well as the themes and ideas shared by its members.
The aim of this essay will be to show how A Bout de Souffle demonstrates what was characteristic of the French New Wave. To do so, it will be necessary to describe first what exactly the New Wave was and to define and explain its main features.

Extraits

[...] As for editing, the French New Wave directors liked to defy conventions and to experiment other ways of putting the shots together. The most striking characteristic in this film is the obvious lack of usual continuity that is present all along the film. The shots are often put together in what could appear as a chaotic way and the viewer is somehow confused, at least at the beginning, because the shots do not always present the logical link Hollywood cinema used us to. [...]

[...] First in 1948 with Alexandre Astruc's notion of the 'camera-pen', which he explained in his article 'Naissance d'une Nouvelle Avant-Garde: la caméra-stylo' ('The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: the camera-pen'). He said: 'The cinema is quite simply becoming a means of expression, just as all the other arts have before it, and in particular painting and the novel. After having been successively a fairground attraction, an amusement analogous to boulevard theatre, or a means of preserving the images of an era, it is gradually becoming a language. [...]

[...] Moreover, according to American critic John Hess, although Truffaut did not express it explicitly in his article, the view the auteur had on the world was also very important: 'An auteur was a film director who expressed an optimistic image of human potentialities within an utterly corrupt society'[4]. This optimism seemed really important for New Wave directors and is often found in Godard's A Bout de Souffle, as will be demonstrated later. Truffaut also came to assert that 'anybody can be a director' and thus, the unqualified critics of Les Cahiers du Cinéma soon started to create their own films in reaction to the 'tradition of quality' and all the commercial and professional conventions. [...]

[...] Similarly, when Michel is shot at the end, we only see the policeman shooting and then Michel running away with blood on his back. In both case, the tragic event is hidden and the viewers are only shown the consequences of it. This was certainly made in order to avoid the costs of the effects that would have been necessary, but it creates an impression of secret, as if the viewers were always missing the important parts of the story. [...]

[...] The way Michel is constantly talking and often asserting things about life and women in general is similar to the assertions French New Wave directors were not afraid to make about cinema since they were critics: according to Siclier, '[New Wave young directors] knew what they wanted and were proclaiming it plainly' The fact that the actors were free to improvise while shooting is another proof of the importance with which they considered freedom of expression. But despite of that, it is also noticeable that there are several communication problems in A Bout de Souffle. Indeed, as Patricia is American, she often does not understand or misunderstand Michel and in this regards, the gap in their relationship seems to stand for the misunderstanding between the New Wave directors and their predecessors or even their disparagers. Another important theme in the movement and in the film is the rejection and despise of any kind of moral. [...]