If you don’t like youth, if you don’t like freedom, if you don’t like feminism… then go fuck yourself! Breathless is the first feature film by Jean-Luc Godard. It follows Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a young car thief who goes to Paris to collect money that some members of the underworld owe him and to meet Patricia (Jean Seberg), a woman he has slept with and wants to seduce again, before fleeing to Rome. However, on the way, he kills a policeman who wanted to ticket him and finds himself wanted by the police. Breathless gives a new breath to youth, which had previously been filmed by older filmmakers.
Here, it is the youth who films the youth. Breathless stands out as an emblem of the New Wave through this commitment to representation. This choice is reflected in the realization of the work. The action takes place in the city and, rather than being filmed in a studio, it is shot in natural settings on the streets of Paris. Thus, we truly wander with the characters, on foot or by car, through the real Parisian crowd (which sometimes glances at the camera). This use of natural settings leads Godard to adapt his filming style, so, when Michel drives Patricia to her appointment, the camera is mounted in the car, offering a jolting shot centered on the characters' necks. Godard plays with these jolts that the camera experiences through editing when Michel lists the beautiful parts that make up Patricia: between each compliment, there is a cut which creates a slight scale shift between each shot. Spontaneity and naturalness are a central point of this film and this is very much reflected in the sound treatment. For example, while Michel and Patricia are in the room, with the window open, and as Michel speaks, a fire truck passes in the street, covering his words.
Jean-Luc Godard made the choice to use this take that another filmmaker would have deemed unusable. To continue on this new path of sound, we must talk about language because the characters in Breathless speak in a very natural way, "like young people." Certainly, they declaim deep and somewhat artificial speeches but they also allow themselves digressions. For example, Michel interrupts himself to comment on a car. Godard breaks the classic codes of sound and image, even going so far as to attack the classic pillar that is the fourth wall, which guarantees the illusion of reality that cinema presents to the viewer. In the first sequence where Michel drives a stolen car, Belmondo's character addresses the viewer directly with a camera look interspersed with glances at the road: "If you don't like the sea, if you don't like the mountains, if you don't like the city... well, go fuck yourself!". In addition to speaking to the viewer, which is already unconventional, Michel insults him.
Beyond aesthetics, Jean-Luc Godard exposes fundamental themes for the youth but taboo for other generations such as free sexuality. At a time when marriage prevails, he stages two young people living their sexuality as they see fit without conforming to norms. Moreover, Godard presents Patricia as an emancipated woman. She came to Paris from New York to study and work in order to build a career as a journalist. And she is in control of her body: she chooses not to wear a bra (as Michel points out) and lives her sexuality as she pleases. However, from a current perspective, some aspects of the representation of women and masculinity in Breathless are problematic.
Indeed, the relationship between Michel and Patricia is characterized by a unique desire of Michel who wants to impose his will on Patricia. He seeks only the satisfaction of his sexual desire and control without caring about her. Thus, he never respects her categorical refusals and violently assaults her. Whether it is psychological and verbal violence, particularly when he drops her off by car after giving her a long enumeration of what makes her a very pretty woman "but who is cowardly," referring to her previous refusals, then insulting her: "Get lost, disgusting!". Or physical violence, after breaking into her home and insisting on having sexual intercourse that she refused, he demands a smile from her: "I will count to eight, if by eight you haven't smiled at me, I will strangle you." He places his hands around her neck and counts. Patricia defies his gaze but ultimately gives in at the last second.
All of this is not a simple game of seduction but the reflection of real violence. Many films of the New Wave are similar on this issue of the problematic representation of the relationship of man towards woman. We can mention Adieu Philippine by Jacques Rozier which presents us another Michel who seduces two best friends simultaneously and in secret in order to get as much as possible from each of them. The overexposure through films to this figure of the bad boy seducer sanctifies it, it is idealized and normatively integrated by the people who are exposed to it and is problematic because it encourages the recreation of this behavior.
That is why films that provide a counterpoint are necessary, such as Jules and Jim by François Truffaut, a leader of the New Wave, which represents an emancipated woman who does not live her sexuality and her life under the control of men and highlights the formation of a throuple. Thus, Breathless carries an innovative perspective on and for the youth of the sixties. However, from a current post Me-Too perspective, modernity is no longer what it was…