BSA 106 (Screen Arts) Semester 2 Week 2 : Breathless and French New Wave Cinema

Overview of French New Wave

The French New Wave was a film movement in a time when film-making was becoming a lot more affordable and portable, because of these technological advances people who weren't able to produce films before were now able to do so, chief among these being the film critics themselves.

After the end of World War II, Nazi censorship of French cinema is a thing of the past and the market is flooded with foreign film, specifically Hollywood films. A large part of the French New Wave genre is it's nod to Hollywood movies and the subversion of their conventions.

Four of the most iconic pioneers of the genre were Jean-Luc Goddard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette. These four men felt that cinema had become stale due to a lack of innovation but they weren't able to make movies themselves until the technology became affordable. When it did, they and their small crews changed film forever.

Review of Breathless (1960)

In class we watched the 1960 film Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Goddard, one of the most famous new wave practitioners in history. The movie follows a small time thief who steals a car and instinctively kills a cop, now on the run he returns to Paris so that he can get money from an old ally and escape the country, but before he can leave he has to convince the girl he's fallen in love with to accompany him to Rome.

The film is highly regarded, critic Roger Ebert placed it's influence among Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane. Personally I really enjoyed the film and understand why it is placed in such high regard, even in this modern day with our much advanced equipment I am absolutely baffled at how they managed to make this movie. It's like a really great student film and serves as a good example of how you only need skill, talent and persistence to make a great film.

Some prominent techniques in Breathless and staples of the genre are:

- Hand-held camera

The cinematographer Raoul Coutard was a war photographer before becoming involved in films, he said that his experience in journalism helped him on set, especially for Breathless, which was filmed in a documentary manner. He says "When we were shooting Breathless we tried to film it the way news reports were shot i.e., with a handheld camera and in natural lighting. In other words, for me, it was very much like filming in the heat of battle". 

Quote retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D79NKnAXRc8

The film-makers of Breathless wanted to catch a sense of spontaneity and realism in how the characters were represented, so much so that the director, Goddard, chose to leave the script behind sometimes, making up dialogue on set. So this way of shooting the movie stayed true to that idea and the final film feels much more improvised and natural than I had thought it would be.

It also doesn't get overused, even though it is shot handheld, it never distracts from the movie. I was surprised by just how steady they managed to keep the camera and couldn't help but wonder whether or not they used some kind of stabilizer. After the film I looked at some behind the scenes photos and in all of them the camera op simply shoulder mounts the camera (with exception to some specific tripod shots), which is very impressive.

    

Because of their small crews, lack of resources and budgetary limitations the New Wave filmmakers had to other ways to achieve the shots they wanted, a wheelchair, for example, was a good replacement for a dolly.

I am very surprised by how professional they managed to make the movie look, considering they had less resources than even us. I've been looking at some recent student films and music videos for another class I have and I can't help but notice how cramped those films feel and how poorly framed they are. It makes sense, shooting in a normal environment leaves little place for a camera, but these filmmakers had the same limitations. The bedroom scene that lies at the heart of Breathless is shot in a very small space and yet during my viewing I never even noticed it.

This behind the scenes image shows how cramped the crew was in these conditions. This also shows just how small the crew was at certain points in filming, the fact that this room was the setting for a large portion of the film is very impressive, but I imagine also not as time time-consuming. Minimal set-up, a crew and cast very comfortable around each other and no location or travel expenses is probably the reason for why this scene is as long as it is. Something that did take me aback when I saw this behind the scenes photo is that the cabinet in the corner by the camera operator hasn't been moved out of the way, I can only imagine how frustrating this must have been. I assume the set-up was kept unchanged throughout the shoot so that they didn't have to worry about continuity or scene extra shot setups. The fact that the actress is present in a shot she isn't even in shows just how small scale this production was.

This also happens to be the best scene in the movie, maybe it was because of how much time they had and how comfortable everyone got with each other, you can really feel the actors chemistry and comfort in this scene.

- Jump cuts

The film is filled with jump cuts, wherein long shots are cut up to look like longer periods of time has passed. This was a discouraged technique in film at the time and the French New Wave experimented with it to give it a new meaning. Where filmmakers would normally try to hide these cuts, now they were being celebrated. It's interesting that jump cuts are avoided because they take the viewer out of the film, their avoidance was for immersion, and yet the movie is very immersive. I think the way Goddard uses jump cuts makes the film feel more like real life, where things happen frenetically.

Some scenes with these cuts work really well, not only to give a sense of time passing, but also to make the film feel more frantic and rhythmic. There is a very good scene in a cab where the main character shouts orders at the cab driver, the jump cuts tie these together and we get a feel of what it would be like in that situation. It's hard to explain but it feels closer to our real lives with the jump cuts present.

Surprisingly this wasn't planned from the start, the film was too long and needed to be cut down, so longer shots (like most of the driving scenes) were cut to get rid of the sequences where nothing happens and keep only the most important parts.


- Audio Dubbing in Post-Production

Because of the sound of the camera and the director giving lines to the actors during shooting the film makers of Breathless - and creators of many other French New Wave films - were forced to leave out on set sound recording and instead opt for post-production dubbing. This is why in all the behind the scenes photos there is never a sound guy present.

This was unfortunately something that really stood out to me. While it didn't bother me, I noticed that some things that objects or people that would have made a noise in other films simply didn't in this one. But I also have to add that I was very impressed by just how good the lip syncing was, I never felt like I was watching a dub in this department. A poor dubbing job can really put me off, I feel like too often I've seen bad dubbing, sometimes even in an animated movie - which doesn't even make sense - but Breathless did it seamlessly and as such I was never taken out of the movie.

- Breaking the fourth wall

This was an interesting technique that took me a while to realize what was going on. In the film the main character, Michel, talks directly at the camera during the opening sequence. I thought I had missed something for a moment and simply assumed that he was talking to the girl he was with. For some reason she had a camera? The scene felt like a found footage film to me, and someone else pointed out that it was extremely similar to a vlog - something I agreed with. The way it was produced - with jump cuts and talking directly to the audience - was a lot like a YouTube video.

I think this is a good substitute for narration though, him talking to the audience helps build up the character and establish some important information. It still is a form of narration, but for some reason it feels more natural and gives the same impression as an unreliable narrator - where what he says might not be his true self, and rather the same way he would act towards others.

This was one of my favourite elements in the movie and I would have actually liked to see it pop up a couple more times. The ending uses it really well though, with Patricia looking at the audience after Michel dies.

- Filming in public

Something that the makers of Breathless, and other New Wave filmmakers, did was to shoot in public, with real locations instead of sets. I was wondering how they managed to get permission to film in some of the public places they do with such a small budget, but of course they never actually got permission. The use of real locations gives the film a sense of scale that isn't usually possible with such a small movie.

What Breathless did really well was how it created a sense of place. The hotel scene really comes to mind when I say this, during this elongated sequence I really felt like I was there and with the characters. It was a surprisingly intimate scene considering when it came out, not something I had expected. The start of the film set up different expectations than what it ended up being, at first I thought it would be a watered down gangster noir movie - like the American films that inspired it, but it ended up being a surprisingly personal film and I grew to care for the characters. I really enjoyed this film and it has made me interested in exploring this movement further.