A Bout de Souffle
Screening: 9 December 2002
France 1959 (subtitles)
90 minutes
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Leading players - Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger.
Synopsis
A Bout de Souffle examines the last hours of Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), his relationship with Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) and his attempt to escape the police net tightening around him. On the surface the plot is that of a not very original thriller, but Godard made it completely his own in conception and execution. All the rules of conventional film making are scorned: the camera is rough and unrefined and the script and editing are jumbled, rambling, repetitive and inconclusive, full of irrelevance and abruptly changing moods. Godard’s debt to American “B” picture mythology is obvious but the interest comes from the way Godard handles his material.* * * * * *
A Bout de Souffle proved to be one of the most startlingly innovative films of the 60s and had an enormous impact on film makers both in France and abroad. It contributed to driving the French cinema at the forefront of what was to be a worldwide reshaping of the whole notion of how a fictional feature film could be constructed. The New Wave aimed at change on virtually every level of film style. All the rules of conventional 1950s narrative continuity editing, with its careful establishing shots and patterned use of close-ups and total rejection of any trace of spontaneity or improvisation, could be questioned. Here the change has been most radical and, forty years after its first release, it is now virtually impossible to see Godard’s A Bout de Souffle as the revolutionary work it looked in 1960, so universally accepted have its structural advances become.
