Next
to Citizen Kane, Breathless is the most famous first feature in the history of
cinema, and is, like Kane, a work
which revolutionized film form. Seberg is the amoral American making her living
in Paris selling the New York Herald
Tribune, Belmondo the small-time gangster on the run from the police who is
betrayed and destroyed by her. Godard’s blithe mixing of tones and influences,
his nonchalant attitude towards violence, and his visual style, with its
legendary jump cuts, reflected his determination to make a film “where anything
goes: that was what it was all about. Anything people did could be integrated
in the film . . . I said to myself: we have already had Bresson, we have just
had Hiroshima, a certain kind of cinema has
just drawn to a close, maybe ended, so let’s add the finishing touch, let’s
show that anything goes.” “The most important of the New Wave films [and] also
the most passionate” (Andrew Sarris). Godard’s debt to Melville, and
particularly Bob le Flambeur, is
partially repaid in a long sequence in which Seberg interviews Melville, who
plays a novelist called Parvulesco. This in turn lead to Belmondo being cast in
Melville’s Léon Morin, Priest closing
the circle of homage.
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