2 - Breathless

Summary

It is useless to pretend that human creatures find their contentment in repose. What they require is action, and they will create it if it is not offered by life.

–Charlotte Brontë, quoted by Jean-Luc Godard, 1952

Although I felt ashamed of it at one time, I do like À bout de souffle very much, but now I see where it belongs – along with Alice in Wonderland. I thought it was Scarface.

–Jean-Luc Godard, 1962

Godard's first feature traveled to English-speaking countries as Breathless, a suitably snappy title for a speedy, jazzed-up picture that hops to the rhythm of gunshots, bongo drums, and the on-the-run life-style of its hero. Its French title, À bout de souffle, points to a different meaning, however: being winded, maybe exhausted, or even at the end of breath, as the hero literally is when he collapses in the street at the end of his ultimately fatal career. Of course it's a jaunty title, but it's also an ironic, ambivalent one. In any case, it helped launch the picture – and Godard's featurefilmmaking career – with a roar that still reverberates. Breathless remains his most widely known and frequently seen work.

The story is based on a scenario by François Truffaut, a few pages long and providing a reasonably close outline of the finished film. The hero is Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a rascally Parisian who makes his living as a stealer of cars, seducer of women, and all-around rogue with lots of connections but few friends on whom he can depend in a crisis.