Film: À Bout De Souffle
Release date: 13th September 2010
Certificate: PG
Running time: 87 mins
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri-Jacques Huet
Genre: Crime/Drama/Romance/Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: Blu-ray
Country: France
A Bout De Souffle has influenced countless modern filmmakers, such as Quentin Tarantino, whose pop-culture literate style owes a lot to Godard. Michel’s plight is always on our mind – the film is peppered with reminders of how the police are closing in on him – but mainly we’re just hanging out with this young hip couple as they discuss contemporary music, films and novels, and smoke an incessant number of cigarettes.
Small-time hood and car thief, Michel Poiccard (Belmondo) kills a policeman with a pistol he found in his stolen car. Returning to Paris, he goes to see an American girl called Patricia (Seberg), with whom he had a fling with in Nice.
Michel needs to leave the country, and is trying to track down some colleagues who owe him money. In the meantime, he and Patricia hang out, as he tries to convince her to leave with him, while Inspector Vital closes in…
Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature was quite shocking for its time, not for its content but the way in which it was filmed and edited. Using lightweight equipment meant that Godard could set up a shot in a moment, filming on the busy streets of Paris in ways that had been impossible before. Many of the external shots of A Bout De Souffle seem to have been shot ‘guerrilla’ style, with members of the public passing by, oblivious. There’s a classic, blink-and-you’ll miss it shot of a girl with a similar haircut to Jean Seberg’s walking close to her, giving her hairstyle a critical look before walking on. This style of filmmaking works against the film at times though – some of the scenes shot at night utilise natural back-ground light and its nigh-on impossible to make out any detail. The dialogue was recorded in sync, too, and there are times where conversations are drowned out by traffic and sirens.
The most controversial element of the film is the editing. Godard had originally shot the film in a more traditional manner, with the requisite establishing shots and reverse angles, but the first cut running time came in well over two hours in length, needing to be closer to the ninety minute mark. As he wanted to achieve this without losing any scenes, Godard trimmed the scenes down, discarding establishing and reverse shots. This gives the film it’s strange, jump-cut look.
The jump-cut editing has a tendency to wrong-foot the film’s audience, giving the impression of an amateur filmmaker who has more or less cut-and-pasted scenes together, mismatching shots in the process. However, the camera-work is exemplary, never losing focus on the film’s protagonists. There is what looks like a crane-shot as Michel first catches up with Josephine, and they walk together down the Champs Elysee. Another wonderful shot is the finale, as the camera follows behind Michel as he runs down a busy street. Apparently, this was created by Godard pushing the cameraman in a wheelchair.
The story itself is paper-thin: Michel needs to call in some debts so he can flee the country, and spends the running time tracking down his erstwhile friends, and trying to convince Josephine to come with him. The problem is that Michel is a casually violent, sociopathic man-child. He’s a little older than Josephine, but a lot more immature. He gets away with it by being incredibly handsome, and has any number of women fawning over him. He’s obsessed by American-made cars - and makes a point of stealing them at any opportunity. Josephine, meanwhile, an American about to study at the Sorbonne, isn’t exactly wise beyond her years. Her attempt to rationalise a major decision she takes towards the end of the film is full of awkward adolescent musings.
Actress Jean Seberg was already a well-known star, having previously starred in Saint Joan, while Belmondo was a relatively unknown actor – at least until the film was released. The man just effuses Gallic Cool. Seberg is very easy on the eye, and gives her character a confident sexuality - someone who isn’t afraid neither to discuss sex nor to deal maturely with her lover’s more overt sexual advances.
Famously, Godard started production without a finished script (the original story was worked out by himself and Francois Truffaut), and was writing dialogue in the morning for scenes he was shooting that afternoon. This may have lent the characters their contradictory nature.
Studio Canal’s Blu-ray release contains a restored version of the film, colour-correcting some scenes and restoring shots which had previously been edited due to damaged stock. This edition contains a number of extras, including a great introduction by Colin Maccabe, who goes into some of the background to the making of the film. There are two documentaries, one interviewing American artists who came into contact with Goddard and how he influenced them, the other set in the hotel room rented by Michel in the film.
The subtitles for A Bout De Souffle need mentioning, especially in regard of the film’s final lines of dialogue. It seems that every new release of the film contains a different translation for this sequence, and Studio Canal’s version is no different. In each case, Inspector Vital takes Michel’s last words and twists them into an insult towards Josephine. Here, Michel utters, “I am such a creep,” and when Josephine asks what he said, the inspector replies, “He said, you are such a creep.”
Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature was a daring experiment in defying the conventions of cinema, almost by default rather than design. It established him as a darling of the French New Wave, and made a star of Jean-Paul Belmondo. Goddard focuses on the seemingly trivial rather than the conventional drama of a criminal evading the police, which becomes mere background noise in the face of the sheer sex appeal of the two leads. MOW
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