Personal Canon: 21. À Bout de souffle (1960)

À Bout de souffle, aka Breathless (1960)

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Starring: Jean Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg

Grade: A
**Read this retrospective review and others like it at InRo**

The opening line of dialogue in "Breathless" is "After all, I'm an arsehole", the first of one of many admissions by Jean-Paul Belmondo's Michel that he isn't the perfect guy to be in a relationship with. It's not the only confession on show; Jean-Luc Godard may have gotten more overtly political with age but his debut, as part of a trio of films dedicated to revolutionising French cinema, is well and truly throwing down the gauntlet. The restless bravado and adrenaline-fuelled antics of leading man Belmondo may lay claim to the film's enticing title, but only form part of the nature of "Breathless" as a crash course in rebellion.

After stealing a car, Michel proceeds to speed wildly through the French countryside, culminating in a police chase which he settles by shooting and killing a uniformed officer. He reacts to this with not an inkling of consideration or regret (Godard's cinematic style is often too brisk to allow for that anyway) and moves onto yet more shady dealings in the heart of Paris's criminal underworld. You get the impression that he isn't exactly dealing with the crème de la crème of the city's amoral hierarchy, as their exchange is a tad amateurish and very nearly foiled. Nevertheless, he hopes to obtain a wad of money from the venture and run away to Italy with an American woman he met in Nice three weeks previously.

Jean Seberg, as the American twenty year-old Patricia, knows that Michel is no good, despite all of her entertaining to the contrary, testing his commitment to her by questioning his feelings even though she knows that the preferred response isn't coming. At one point she even steps onto a balcony Juliet-style to illicit romantic affection from her would-be Romeo, only to be admonished and told to come down. For all of their flirting it becomes painfully obvious that Michel and Patricia are completely unsuited to each other. As well as being recklessly uncommitted to any one girl or goal, Michel is hopelessly unable to guage anyone else's feelings or opinions, content to measure their tryst through physical, sexual intimacy.

The feeling I get from "Breathless" is that Godard intended to create a more crime-based noir setup, with the forefront of the story coming from Michel's misadventures as a tearaway villain rather than his connection to Patricia. The film's sudden shift from the opening act of hooliganism to a more intuitive, romantic drama feels so sincere and immersive to be even slightly orchestrated, and their relationship is interrogated to the extent that it becomes so lucidly sadistic to watch. Godard's entry into the era of the French New Wave is undoubtedly antagonistic and provocative, mirroring the discord of filmmakers towards mainstream cinema at this time. Michel speaks directly at the camera, a vessel for the authorial intention of Godard as he spouts the lines, "If you don't like the countryside, if you don't like the mountains, if you don't like the city.... get stuffed". Godard's style of direction and its disregard for cinematic protocol defines "Breathless" to a point, but doesn't deter from what is a scintillating, profound study of a man and woman drawn together through primal necessity. Like Bertolucci later did with Last Tango in Paris, Godard instigates a situation where we aren't necessarily involved with either proponent of the romance, but captivated by their desire to live in the moment, regardless of their future life and loves.

Perhaps there's something about "Breathless" that appeals to my romantic sensibilities, the feeling that when you're young you aren't bound to commitment even though you secretly crave it, and that when tested loyalty counts for very little. One can mistake love for sex, physical attraction, the need to rebel, but when push comes to shove we know what we don't want. Michel, as a dreamer, has a very narrow concept of success and failure, and doesn't recognise that Patricia is keen enough on him to try and construct a more positive image of the guy as a loveable rogue. Patricia is most identifiable from an audience standpoint in her introspective infuriation with Michel, and thankfully Godard never pertains to iconise Michel as a matryr of anarchism, and if anything portrays France as a haven for exploitation and deceit.

The French New Wave is often characterised by the sharp cuts and jazzy accompinament that peppers "Breathless" and its superficial glamourisation of Paris and its citizens. "Breathless" bears many similarities to thirties crime dramas like John Cromwell's Algiers and Howard Hawks' blistering, original Scarface, in that it discourages empathy for its leading man, charting his downfall through a sprawling, neo-noir setup. Godard can get away with re-interpreting thirties gangster pictures/forties noir cinema as a desperate, tragic waste because Michel is such a profligated, disconcerting presence, so unconcerned with getting caught in the first place. Unlike Hawks' film "Breathless" isn't consciously delivering an impression of Michel so much as allowing Belmondo the freedom to be indefensibly fearless (the worst kind of courage?) and is a much more impacting feat because of this. That's perhaps why Patricia's pressured role as an informant to the police doesn't have the melodramatic caveat of a Raymond Chandler novel, and why the lack of real devotion towards any character or story strand works so well.

This Paris, like thirties Algiers, is a ruse for grubbier disgrace. The wrenching sadness about "Breathless" is in its confirmation of life as unfulfilled, and Michel's late proclaim that he's "had enough" sums up the film's dogged independence as an entity eager to shun rules as much as Michel himself. A rapid, slightly abrupt finale reads as if Godard had just put the phone down on a call that was somehow getting out of hand. He's said all he needs to say, and even though "Breathless" won't always amount to everyone's idea of polish, the result is so much meatier than the sum of its parts.


*A digitally restored version of "Breathless" was shown at the TCM Classic Film Festival last month, and is released in cinemas from May 28th*

Personal Canon: 88. Nieco z Alenky (Alice) (1988)

Directed by Jan Svankmajer
Starring: Kristýna Kohoutová

I hadn't researched Jan Svankmajer's Alice before I sat down to watch it as part of my Animated Film module, assuming rightly that it was based on the story of Alice in Wonderland and wrongly that it was going to be somewhat colourful. The pallid nature of the film, which mixes a child actor and mostly genuine locations with stop-motion characters, adds to the eery drained atmosphere of a world that's very far removed from the Wonderland I'd been accustomed to.

As the visually creative Tim Burton seeks to re-jig the story this coming Spring even he will have a job to match the creepy exploits of Svankmajer, who extracts all of the sinister elements of Lewis Caroll's characters, including an intimidating and very anti-social white rabbit, a clockwork Mad Hatter and March Hare, and an axe-wielding Queen of Hearts. As a character Alice is impetuous and cold, and the deadpan repetition of her delivery of "said the white rabbit", accompanied by a close-up of the girl's mouth, gives the impression that this girl is entranced, inhuman even.

Above all, Alice is a victory for interpretation and originality. Svankmajer isn't subverting Alice into an anti-fairy tale so much as interpreting the more intense, enigmatic areas of the story to reveal the darkness in Caroll's work. The physical transformations Alice must endure in order to adapt to Wonderland's cavernous character, and how the people she meet encourage intolerance and disorder.

Personal Canon: 89. The American Friend (1977)

Directed by Wim Wenders

Starring: Bruno Ganz, Dennis Hopper, Lisa Kreuzer, Gerard Blain

A discussion of Wim Wender's The American Friend in a Film Studies seminar a couple of years ago instigated a bit of an argument. My suggestion of a gay subtext in the film went down like a lead balloon, to which I responded defensively -- as anyone would. All I know is that my gaydar was going like the clappers all the way through The American Friend, which is adapted from one of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels. Ripley has a pretty ambiguous sexuality himself -- even if Highsmith has publicly denied that he's gay she more than hints that he's a dabbler.

Regardless, The American Friend feels oddly weighty and harsh in its derelict urban setting, and Wenders' direction often accentuates the grime of workshops and bedrooms through heavy tinting and intent close-ups. It's all so sparse: the broken community of the film's modest amount of characters and settings alluding to the disarray of international relations, culture clashes, and the pummelled identity of a people lost to fascism. Bruno Ganz's illness-stricken German picture-framer forms a friendship with a dealer of forged art (Dennis Hopper as the aforementioned Ripley), who in turn mentions to gangland friends that the German would make a good hitman.

Jonathan Lynn's hilarious biting satire Clue offers up a mini-revelation in the form of the line, "Why should the police come? Nobody's called them.". The power of suggestion similarly takes hold in The American Friend, and the willingness of woodworker Jonathan to accept such suggestion is rather like the assuming role of Germany in the Hitler years. This suggestion is also embodied by the bravely-alienating flirtation between Jonathan and Ripley, who don't quite reach the prick-teasing efforts of Jude Law and Michael Caine in the recent Sleuth, but certainly more than hint that they're pining for one another. Since The American Friend bears a lot of the hallmarks of 70's crime drama's like The French Connection, its remarkable that it has time to fully integrate the sexual endeavours and rich politics: a potent mix.

Personal Canon: 90. Separate Tables (1958)

Directed by Delbert Mann
Starring: David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth, Wendy Hiller, Gladys Cooper

Bournemouth hotels should be serene during the off-season; a time where the long-term residents can relish the lack of drunken tourists and screaming kids. The host of characters that inhabit the Bournemouth hotel featured in Delbert Mann's Separate Tables, however, seemingly don't want the drama of the holidays to end, and backstab, bitch, and conduct affairs with barely a second thought. This film isn't so much like Edmund Goulding's delightfully trashy 1932 Best Picture winner though, bleakly satirising its inhabitants to enlighten ever-present social divides and exercising a crisp, cut-throat humour.

Almost vehement that we consign the wild bunch to an array of archetypes (the old maid, the glamourpuss, the stubborn elite, the dirty old man) Separate Tables encourages us to evaluate these assumptions and their easily-concluded nature, and does so by distributing its characters in a thoroughly interesting political spectrum, which helps to highlight the internal struggles of these people to simply move with the times. The middle portion of the film, in which Dame Gladys Cooper's utterly immovable Mrs. Railton-Bell confronts the private life of David Niven's Major, is incredibly telling. Her desire to include everything and everyone in his business, as an act of morally-ingrained manipulation, emphasises the old-guard ethics and hypocritical etiquette of a generation in fear of its place in the world. With war long gone, and marooned in an age of consumerism, the teenager, rock n'roll, Mrs. Railton-Bell exhibits the still-prevalent desperation to live up to perceived class-driven archetypes, and typifies the confusion of Table's erratic, aging community.

A further salute to this is Burt Lancaster's reverence and hatred of the glamorous, man-eating Rita Hayworth, whom he truly loves but views as a riskier prospect than the matronly, traditional Wendy Hiller. When a man's doubting Rita Hayworth as a romantic option, you have to reckon he's got hangups, right? Deborah Kerr's Sibyl is the centre of the film, and the political spectrum, as she's been denied the freedom of thought by her restrictive mother. So too the major: the 'tentative' romance that he and Sibyl engage in culminating in a tremendous, wrenchingly half-spoken scene towards the end, which provides the most genuine and capping element of Mann's rich endeavour. As a term, 'separate tables' may appear harmless enough, but its mild-mannered etiquette is a mask for more insidious insecurities, fears, motivations; seeing yourself through other people is hard to take.

91. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Directed by Woody Allen
Starring: Mia Farrow, Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, Barbara Hershey, Carrie Fisher

Woody Allen has a well-documented fascination with women. His films are usually scattered with interesting females, besieged by them in fact, and his penchant for sticking by his Actresses and getting them nominations (at least in the Supporting sense) is to be admired. This ability is epitomised none moreso than in his 1986 film, Hannah and Her Sisters, which sees a selection of Actresses (all of which probably deserved Oscars for this) navigate the murky waters of uncertain romance and sisterhood.

A lot of what makes Hannah so successful is that it won't really commit to telling any one story in particular, scanning a network of people without making each of their lives a separate, static representation of their personality, but a realisation of a constantly evolving family, whereby relationships aren't restricted or set in stone, and where sisterhood doesn't necessarily mean unconditional admiration or adulation. Each sister comes across as individual, but none of them have massive arcs to undergo or major hurdles to encounter, our view of them capable through their attitude towards each other, be it a hint of jealousy and resentment at a man's preference of one sister over the other, or an outraged reaction to literary truth.

Key to buying into this family's thinly-veiled and rather sad dynamic is the way that life is treated as so incidental; affairs happen matter-of-factly, and there's never any lingering impression of their lives as a drama. These sisters embody guilt, angst and contempt but aren't riddled with or defined by them. In theory, this family could so easily implode from within, but the nature of these women as unaware, the different perspectives that they have on life and the different roles that they fulfill, tell you that this is and always has been how things will operate.

92. Almost Famous (2000)

Directed by Cameron Crowe
Starring: Patrick Fugit, Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand, Philip Seymour Hoffman

If you haven't seen Almost Famous, have you been living in a cave? it's about a teenager who goes on tour with a rock band (without the permission of his mother, might I add) in the hope of getting an article about them published in coveted Rolling Stone magazine. The premise seems like an adolescent boy's dream: drink, drugs, girls, sex, but William (played by Patrick Fugit -- never to be seen much again after this) isn't really interested in all that. He'd much rather sit back and act the voyeur, judging and observing the crazy characters in the band's entourage, including groupie Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), who desperately wants to maintain her prominence as the band's 'it' girl.

Almost Famous is such a success because it's able to demonstrate the fine line between unknown and celebrity, and how quickly 'celebrities' can be banished to distant memory. Patrick watches a band struggle to stay in the limelight, a woman struggle to stay important to someone, and all the while risks the wrath of his mother and places his young trust in the hands of an alien community of people, most of which aren't all that responsible. He shares the aspiration of both Penny and the band but for much more cohesive artistic reasons than their insecure goals. The desire of so many characters to become "untouchable", without any consideration for what that means beyond continuity and the here and now, emerges as something very sinister and unhealthy. The gratuity and iconography of drinking and drugs are ever-present but it's difficult to look at them in that way, and we eventually come to William's conclusion that the people we're watching are no more together than a loosely-bound portfolio of media imagery, a frayed mess of ideas.

After a series of rows the group embark on a very awkward coach trip in which few people are on speaking terms with one another; the Elton John song 'Tiny Dancer' then plays, and eventually unites them in a sing-a-long. It's one of my favourite parts of the film because it shows how when away from distraction each is able to revert to the real reason they're there in the first place, the music, and it's the only way their community (like a band, almost) is ever harmonious. Most tellingly though, it alludes to our natural human desire of wanting to be consumed by something or someone (whether it be music, love, fame etc.) and like the "Almost" in the title suggests, nobody in this film ever really gets there.

93. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

Directed by Sydney Pollack

Starring: Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Gig Young, Susannah York, Red Buttons

As it states at the beginning of the trailer to Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses Don't They?, people are the ultimate spectacle. Jane Fonda's Gloria wants to be part of a spectacle, travelling to Hollywood in the hope of becoming an actress. All she gets is a place in a marathon dance contest, offering the top prize of $1,500 in the midst of depression-era America.

This isn't the first film to be critical of the 'American dream' and it sure as hell won't be the last, but you'll be hard-pushed to find one so unevenly extreme in its treatment of an aspiring young breed of characters. The participants of the contest live through the cheapened descent that entertainment has undergone, their health, tolerance, and strength sapped with every waltz and jive. It's admittedly more suffering than you're likely to see on television nowadays but there are interesting parallels to reality-TV and talent shows that crush ambitious youngsters all too easily.

A recent first viewing of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? brought this film back to the forefront of my mind. As well as both being titular questions they each feature long sequences of testing character interaction, and as such are a real acting showcase. Horses garnered three acting nominations, and a Supporting Actor win for the devilishly handsome Gig Young. Young is excellent, but the real standout is Jane Fonda, in what is my favourite performance of hers. The ever-charismatic star is the character who really gauges the political situation, and understands that the contest is indicative of this. Her character's apparent awareness of Horses' themes yet inability to rise above the entire debacle the biggest tragedy, Fonda's Gloria reads like a fame-hungry gambler that just can't stop. But the question remains as to whether her fate is a tragic one, or a perverse victory. Watch it, and decide for yourself.

95. Speed (1994)

Directed by Jan De Bont
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Jeff Daniels

There's no doubting Speed always had a good concept going -- the bus can't go under 50mph! Action! Drama! -- but it takes a lot to build upon that and make an excellent idea really stand up as a film. Unlike other action flicks of late, it doesn't get bogged down in its own foundations, its twists and turns well-placed and impacting. If movies are now more likely to be called rollercoaster rides, it's because of Speed, which takes the metaphor more literally than any other. The film is a thrilling journey, creating periods of tension and interaction between a group of people thrown together by chance, and providing narrative shifts to match its meandering vehicle.

Speed is definitely a formulaic film (what action film isn't, really?) but it manages its components so well, even delivering on the pockets of humour that often feel an unnecessary element of the genre. I'm thinking particularly of when Sandra Bullock thinks she has knocked over a baby, only for Keanu Reeves to re-assure her that the pram was occupied by nothing other than tin cans. Indeed, this is an attempt at wry humour in the face of an utterly absurd scenario, the characters' consideration of events that are so uncontrollable a reminder that these are real people, and not just pawns in a game of cat and mouse.