Breathless (1960 film)

Michel's death scene is an iconic scene in the film, but the film's final lines of dialogue are the source of some confusion for English-speaking audiences. The original French plays with ambiguity; it is unclear whether Michel is condemning Patricia or condemning the world in general, and it is unclear whether Patricia is questioning his scorn, questioning the meaning of a French word as elsewhere in the film, or unable to understand the concept of shame.

As Patricia and Detective Vital catch up with the dying Michel, they have the following dialogue:

MICHEL: C'est vraiment dégueulasse.
PATRICIA: Qu'est-ce qu'il a dit?
VITAL: Il a dit que vous êtes vraiment "une dégueulasse".
PATRICIA: Qu'est-ce que c'est "dégueulasse"?[5][6]

This translates literally as:

MICHEL: It's really disgusting.
PATRICIA: What did he say?
VITAL: He said you are really disgusting.
PATRICIA: What is "disgusting"?

In French, "dégueulasse" also has the connotation of "nauseating", or making one want to throw up; in reference to a person, it can be loosely translated as a "disgusting person", i.e. a "louse", "scumbag", or "bitch".

In the English captioning of the 2001 Fox-Lorber Region One DVD, "dégueulasse" is translated as "scumbag", producing the following dialogue:

MICHEL: It's disgusting, really.
PATRICIA: What did he say?
VITAL: He said "You're a real scumbag".
PATRICIA: What's a scumbag?

The 2007 Criterion Collection Region One DVD uses a less literal translation:

MICHEL: Makes me want to puke.
PATRICIA: What did he say?
VITAL: He said you make him want to puke.
PATRICIA: What's that mean, "puke"?

This translation was used in the 2010 restoration.

Breathless was based loosely on a newspaper article that François Truffaut read in The News in Brief. The character of Michel Poiccard is based on real-life Michel Portail and his American girlfriend and journalist Beverly Lynette. In November 1952, Portail stole a car to visit his sick mother in Le Havre and ended up killing a motorcycle cop named Grimberg.[8]

Truffaut worked on a treatment for the story with Claude Chabrol, but they dropped the idea when they could not agree on the story structure. Godard had read and liked the treatment and wanted to make the film. While working as a press agent at 20th Century Fox, Godard met producer Georges de Beauregard and told him that his latest film was not any good. De Beauregard hired Godard to work on the script for Pêcheur d'Islande. After six weeks, Godard became bored with the script and instead suggested making Breathless. Chabrol and Truffaut agreed to give Godard their treatment and wrote de Beauregard a letter from the Cannes Film Festival in May 1959 agreeing to work on the film if Godard directed it. Truffaut and Chabrol had recently became star directors, and their names secured financing for the film. Truffaut was credited as the original writer and Chabrol as the technical adviser. Chabrol later claimed that he only visited the set twice and Truffaut's biggest contribution was persuading Godard to cast Liliane David in a minor role.[8] Fellow New Wave director Jacques Rivette appears in a cameo as the dead body of a man hit by a car in the street.[9]

Godard wrote the script as he went along. He told Truffaut "Roughly speaking, the subject will be the story of a boy who thinks of death and of a girl who doesn't."[10] As well as the real-life Michel Portail, Godard based the main character on screenwriter Paul Gégauff, who was known as a swaggering seducer of women. Godard also named several characters after people he had known earlier in his life when he lived in Geneva.[8] The film includes a couple of in-jokes as well: the young woman selling Cahiers du Cinéma on the street (Godard had written for the magazine), and Michel's occasional alias of Laszlo Kovacs, the name of Belmondo's character in Chabrol's 1959 film Web of Passion.

Truffaut believed Godard's change to the ending was a personal one. "In my script, the film ends with the boy walking along the street as more and more people turn and stare after him, because his photo's on the front of all the newspapers.[11]...Jean-Luc chose a violent end because he was by nature sadder than I.... he had need of [his] particular ending. At the end, when the police are shooting at him one of them said to his companion, 'Quick, in the spine!' I told him, 'You can't leave that in.'"[10]

Jean-Paul Belmondo had appeared in a few feature films before Breathless, but he had no name recognition outside France at the time Godard was planning the film. In order to broaden the film's commercial appeal, Godard sought a prominent leading lady who would be willing to work in his low-budget film. He came to Jean Seberg through her then-husband Francois Moreuil, with whom he had been acquainted.[12] Seberg agreed to appear in the film on 8 June 1959 for $15,000, which was one-sixth of the film's budget. Godard ended up giving Seberg's husband a small part in the film.[8] During the production, Seberg privately questioned Godard's style and wondered if the film would be commercially viable. After the film's success, she collaborated with Godard again on the short Le Grand Escroc, which revived her Breathless character.[12]

Godard initially wanted cinematographer Michel Latouche to shoot the film after having worked with him on his first short films. De Beauregard instead hired Raoul Coutard, who was under contract to him.[13]

The 1958 ethno-fiction Moi, un noir has been credited as a key influence for Godard. This can be seen in the adoption of jump-cuts, use of real locations rather than constructed sets and the documentary, newsreel format of filming.[14][15]

Godard envisaged Breathless as a reportage (documentary), and tasked cinematographer Raoul Coutard to shoot the entire film on a hand-held camera, with next to no lighting.[16] In order to shoot under low-light levels, Coutard had to use Ilford HP5 film, which was not available as motion picture film stock at the time. He therefore took 18-metre lengths of HP5 film sold for 35mm still cameras and spliced them together to 120-metre rolls. During development he pushed the negative one stop from 400 ASA to 800 ASA.[17] The size of the sprocket holes in the photographic film was different from the sprocket holes for motion picture film, and the Cameflex camera was the only camera that worked for the film used.[18]

The production was filmed on location in Paris during the months of August and September in 1959,[16] during the September 1959 visit to Paris of President Eisenhower using an Eclair Cameflex. Almost the whole film had to be dubbed in post-production because of the noisiness of the Cameflex camera[19] and because the Cameflex was incapable of synchronized sound.[13]

Filming began on 17 August 1959. Godard met his crew at the Café Notre Dame near the Hôtel de Suède and shot for two hours until he ran out of ideas.[8] Coutard has stated that the film was virtually improvised on the spot, with Godard's writing lines of dialogue in an exercise book that no one else was allowed to see.[8] Godard gave the lines to Belmondo and Seberg while having a few brief rehearsals on scenes involved, then filming them. No permission was received to shoot the film in its various locations (mainly the side streets and boulevards of Paris) either, adding to the spontaneous feel for which Godard was aiming.[20] However, all locations were selected before shooting began, and assistant director Pierre Rissient has described the shoot as very organized. Actor Richard Balducci has stated that shooting days ranged from 15 minutes to 12 hours, depending on how many ideas Godard had that day. Producer Georges de Beauregard wrote a letter to the entire crew complaining about the erratic shooting schedule. Coutard said that de Beauregard bumped into the director at a cafe and the two got into a fist fight on a day that Godard had called in sick.[13]

Godard shot most of the film chronologically, with the exception of the first sequence, which was shot toward the end of the shoot.[8] Filming at the Hôtel de Suède for the lengthy bedroom scene between Michel and Patricia included a minimal crew and no lights. This location was difficult to secure, but Godard was determined to shoot there after having lived at the hotel after returning from South America in the early 1950s. Instead of renting a dolly with complicated and time-consuming tracks to lay, Godard and Coutard rented a wheelchair for the film that Godard often pushed himself.[13] For certain street scenes Coutard hid in a postal cart with a hole in it for the lens and stamped packages piled on top of him.[8] Shooting lasted for 23 days and ended on 12 September 1959. The final scene where Michel is shot in the street was filmed on the rue Campagne-Première in Paris.[8]

Writing for Combat magazine in 1960, Pierre Marcabru observed: "It seems that, if we had footage of Godard shooting his film, we would discover a sort of accord between the dramatized world in front of the camera (Belmondo and Seberg playing a scene) and the working world behind it (Godard and Raoul Coutard shooting the scene), as if the wall between the real and projected worlds had been torn down."

Breathless was processed and edited at GTC Labs in Joinville with lead editor Cécile Decugis and assistant editor Lila Herman. Decugis has said that the film had a bad reputation before its premiere as the worst film of the year.[8]

Coutard said that "there was a panache in the way it was edited that didn't match at all the way it was shot. The editing gave it a very different tone than the films we were used to seeing."[13] The film's use of jump cuts has been called innovative. Andrew Sarris analyzed it as existentially representing "the meaninglessness of the time interval between moral decisions."[21] Rissient said that the jump cut style was not intended during the film's shooting or the initial stages of editing.[13]