French New Wave -Breathless by Jean Luc Godard

The FNW used forms and structures that defined cinema and elevated them to create a new stylistic advancement in film. Jean Luc Godard's film, Breathless, is one of the defining movies of the French New Wave, a film that comprise all the elements of the movement and did so with mainstream success.

To help satisfy audiences, Breathless is in many ways the opposite of the classical Hollywood cinema, which functions in specific ways. A typical, classical Hollywood cinema includes such film making techniques as continuity editing, highly motivated character-driven stories and a coherent narrative structure.

Narrative transitivity is a sequence of events in which each unit follows one after the other according to a chain of causation. In the Hollywood cinema, this chain is usually psychological and is made up, roughly speaking, of a series of coherent motivations. The beginning of the film starts with establishment, which sets up the basic situation which is then disturbed. A kind of chain reaction then follows, until at the end a new equilibrium is achieved.

From the opening scene Breathless challenges the "chain of causation". Michel, the main character in the film, is seen at the very beginning but given no introduction. He is seen standing outside reading a newspaper, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. There is a woman in the scene, whose name is never mentioned and never shows up in the movie again. They make continuous eye contact as if trying to communicate something to one another. It turns out to be some kind of scheme as she distracts a police officer in order for Michel to steal a car.

The scene ends with the woman saying goodbye to him, and she is never seen again. Hollywood cinema would rarely contain such a scene. In a Hollywood film, if a connection is established between a man and a woman early on, the film's audience is almost always aware of the characters' names, identities and motivations, and the couple will usually have interaction with one another throughout the course of the narrative.

Some of Michel's dialogue in the scene involves him speaking directly to the camera, looking straight into it. Classical Hollywood cinema is invisibility of the camera. It wants to tell a fictional story but wants the viewers to take it seriously without acknowledging that it is a film. By having Michel talk directly to the camera, he acknowledges its presence and seems to relish it.

Michel's character seems to be a combination of different movie characters. The idea is seen in a scene in the film. He is walking down the street past a movie theatre and stops to stare at a poster. He looks into the eyes of the actor in the poster and quietly says the words, "Bogey," to himself. He then tries to mimic the expression of Bogey in the poster, as if he idolizes the man. It shows that Michel is new to acting and tries to act as though he's a living interpretation of the actor on the poster.

Michel murdered a police officer and is trying to meet up with a female friend in Paris so that he can get some money and flee the country. He shoots the police officer in cold blood and makes no excuses or apologies for his actions. He shoots the cop because he doesn't want to be arrested for stealing the car . His relationship with Patricia (the female lead in the film) throughout the film is mainly based on sex and money, which are quite possibly his only interests.. This establishes that he is a liar and a crook from the very beginning. Most characters in film wouldn't have these qualities unless they are villains..This character also defies most leading male characters not only in classical Hollywood cinema but cinema in general. He is arrogant, rebellious, reckless, crude, a thief and a murderer.

Jump shots were another common element of French New Wave cinema and particularly prevalent in Breathless. In one scene Michel is driving in a car with Patricia. He is describing her beauty and the features that he likes about her, and as he gives each detail, the camera does a jump cut. The jump cuts don't add to the narrative or continuity of the scene in any way; they are just continuous cuts to the same shot. The edits flow with the rhythm of Michel's voice, and serve to punctuate everything he says, making each word more noticeable than if the shot just held steady.

The way the director uses camera work and editing in the film is another way that he uses forms and standards to emphasize attention to technique which refers to the way in which the editing exists in time and space. Editing in Breathless is not used to advance the storyline or show continuity between scenes, but to create a relating rhythm of everyday life

Much of the scene and the film is shot on the streets of Paris or in a single apartment. It was shot on location with the natural lighting and little props. The last scene takes place solely in the street, and required very limited props or expensive factors. This clearly defies the Classical Hollywood standard. The tracking that takes place as Michel runs away from the police and Patricia does not appear to be perfect as if the camera was placed on shopping trolley. It isn't smooth like movies nowadays, and this clearly shows the low budget, unprofessional feel incorporated with the movement.

Other camera techniques are used in the film that helps give it a distinctive rhythm. During the scene when Michel first meets up with Patricia, they are seen walking down the street of Paris in a very long take shot by a handheld camera. This is in contrast to the scenes with jump cuts but remains a nice visual counterpoint. The jump cuts at different parts in the film allow for releases in tension when characters are sitting still and talking to one another. When Michel and Patricia walk down the streets having a conversation, the shaky handheld camera seems to be in rhythm with their footsteps. The jump cuts and long takes, while different technically, both serve the purpose of giving the film a unique rhythm and flow.

The end of the film breaks tradition. It is not happy; the protagonist dies, insults his lover, and leaves her to ponder in confusion. This kind of dissatisfaction with life throughout the movie is influenced by the lifestyle in France after World War II. Breathless not only ends with the protagonist dying, but also end with an insult which cant be understood neither the Police nor Patricia and the audience. The death, the distance between the lovers, and the short of resolution makes this film fell real and scandalous which was what the director and film-makers of French New Wave wanted to accomplish.