Out of breath
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Out of breath |
| Original title | À bout de souffle |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1960 |
| length | 87 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jean-Luc Godard |
| script | Jean-Luc Godard |
| production | Georges de Beauregard |
| music | Martial Solal |
| camera | Raoul Coutard |
| cut |
Cécile Decugis Lila Herman |
| occupation | |
| |
Out of breath (original title: À bout de souffle ) is a French gangster film from 1960. Jean-Luc Godard's first feature-length film , which is considered a classic of French cinema and the Nouvelle Vague , was based on a script by François Truffaut , which was rewritten by Godard which in turn was based on a newspaper report of a police officer murder. The first assistant director was Pierre Rissient .
action
The petty criminal Michel is on his way to Paris with a stolen car . When the police stop him at a traffic control, he shoots a policeman and is now on the run. He finds shelter with the American student Patricia, whom he met in southern France and with whom he falls in love. When the couple sit in bed together smoking cigarettes, Patricia introduces the less cultivated Michel to the novel Die wilden Palmen ( The Wild Palms ) by the writer William Faulkner , whom the girl adores. She also tells him about the book Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by the author Dylan Thomas . Michel tries to raise money for his escape to Italy, but the police network is tightening. After all, it is up to Patricia, who, in addition to studying at the Sorbonne, works as a freelance writer for the New York Herald Tribune , to choose between career and lover - and she betrays him to the police. When Michel tries to run away, a bullet hits him in the back. He dies in front of Patricia's eyes.
Film technique and aesthetics
Out of breath has also become famous for its innovative cinematic means. This includes the use of a hand-held camera , recordings under natural light instead of elaborate lighting and the cutting technique of the jump cut . In dialogue scenes, language and image montage are often asynchronous instead of the usual shot-counter-shot montage . The stylistic peculiarities are not only due to Godard's artistic intentions, but also to financial bottlenecks: Godard had to shorten the two-hour film to ninety minutes.
The film was not shot in the studio, but in four weeks on the original locations, namely in the country, in rooms and the streets of Paris, which was a break with previous methods. Godard wanted to film life “where it is”. He saw his film as "a film without rules or whose only rule was: the rules are wrong or are being applied incorrectly". For that reason alone, the film was revolutionary for the time. Some contemporaries compared Godard's technical film revolution with Cubism , which broke with the rules of painting.
The everyday noises of the metropolis of Paris and the film music, which was largely interpreted by the well-known jazz pianist Martial Solal , also contribute to the film's special flair .
Backgrounds and interpretations
Godard intended the film as an homage to American film noir with classic icons like Humphrey Bogart ; In one scene, Michel is also looking at a photograph of the idol in the window of a cinema. The homage turns into an ironic swan song for the classic genre and the classic gangster type: Michel imitates gestures by Bogart and, in contrast to him, who always wins in his roles - such as in The Falcon's Trail - is a loser type. In the end he is even betrayed by Patricia, who wants to prove to herself that she doesn't love him at all. Right at the beginning of the film, he asks the viewer about his preferred holiday destination and then says: “You can take me!” The viewer's identification with Michel is counteracted (here a reference to the epic theater Bertolt Brecht , where this Avoiding identification with the protagonist plays a major role). The end of the film takes the irony or parody to extremes: When Michel is already gunned down on the floor and dies, he grimaces again. On his last words to the American Patricia that she really sucks, she asks the question, looking into the camera: “What does that mean, puke?” In the original French version, however, he says “C'est vraiment dégueulasse” (Das / Es is really disgusting / puke), which is misrepresented as "Vous êtes vraiment une dégueulasse" (you are really disgusted / puke) by a police officer on Patricia's request.
The film ties in with statements from Patricia such as "I don't know whether I am unhappy because I am not free or whether I am not free because I am unhappy" or asking Michel how he would decide between suffering or nothing , also a reference to existentialism, which was very popular at the time . Michel chooses nothing, because suffering is a compromise - and he wants all or nothing. Otherwise, however, he does not respond to Patricia's questions (including a picture that she has newly hung) and it becomes clear that she, a student, and he, a little gangster, do not go together.
Reviews
“Godard's first film, which has long since become a classic, pays homage to Humphrey Bogart and the ' B-films ' of Hollywood. […] The film is teeming with violations of the directorial rules, which at the time were ascribed to the inexperience of the beginner and only later recognized as an ingenious intention on the one hand to emphasize the artifact character of the film and on the other hand to torpedo the American ideal of the 'invisible' direction. "
“Scared aesthetes may like the freestyle directing of the beginner Jean-Luc Godard, which has thrown all film laws overboard, and admire the consistency with which a formal staging was adapted to the ideological anarchy of the screenwriter Francois Truffaut. We can only warn [...] about the mud that the foothills of the “New Wave” are now trying to wash into our cinemas. To be rejected. "
“After the first few scenes everyone is out of breath, the actors, the audience, the pictures, and when Belmondo collapses on the pavement with a bullet in his back, he blows out a cloud of smoke, like a pistol after a shot. To become immortal and then die, that takes ninety minutes, and in the end Belmondo is a star, Godard is a genius and the film is a classic. "
"Still as fresh as 1960 thanks to super coolness."
“Godard's first feature film is refreshingly original, but very problematic in the story of the life and death of a young gangster in Paris due to its heartless nihilism and the deliberate immorality. A general recommendation cannot be made. "
Awards
Out of breath ran in the competition for the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 1960 and was finally awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director. In the same year, the film was awarded the Prix Jean Vigo .
In 1961, Out of Breath was nominated for the Nastro d'Argento for Best Non-Italian Film . Godards Film received the Prix Méliès for Best Film from the Association Française de la Critique de Cinéma . Jean-Paul Belmondo won the Étoile de Cristal for Best Actor . In 1962, Jean Seberg was nominated for the BAFTA Award in the Best Foreign Actress category, but was defeated by Sophia Loren in And Yet They Live .
Remake
In 1983, Breathless was an American remake with Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky in the leading roles. The film is set in Los Angeles , which is where it was shot. The nationalities of the main roles are reversed compared to the original: the gangster is the native American, his lover is a French student. The film couldn't come close to the cult status of the original.
Remarks
In 2003, the Federal Agency for Civic Education, in cooperation with numerous filmmakers, created a film canon for work in schools and included this film in their list. In the list of the hundred best films published by Focus in 2002, Out of Breath was ranked 33rd.
Quotes from the movie
- “ When I was getting dirty in Rome in December, I worked as a film assistant at the Cinecittà . "
(Crook Michel, played by actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, to a friend)
- “ You can really feel sorry for American women. In America they are prudish and here they devour men with skin and hair. But they never experience what true love is in life. "
(Michel on American and French women)
- “ I would like to know what's going on inside you, Michel. I keep looking at you and searching. And I can't find anything, I can't find what it is. "
(Patricia, played by actress Jean Seberg, to Michel)
- " I'm exhausted either way. I also long for prison. Nobody will talk to me there, I see nothing but four walls […] I want to sleep, I'm dead tired. "
(Michel shortly before the arrival of the police)
literature
- Michael Töteberg (Ed.): Metzler Filmlexikon . JB Metzler Verlag, 2005
Web links
- Breathless in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Breathless at rotten tomatoes (English)
- Out of breath in the online film database
- Out of breath in the German dubbing file
- Review by Ulrich Behrens on filmzentrale.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Approval certificate for out of breath . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , May 2014 (PDF; test number: 22 189-d K).
- ↑ Harun Farocki has exemplified Godard's application of jump cuts in Out of Breath in the analysis of a sequence of the film, in: Shot-counter shot: The most important expression in the law of value film ; originally published in: Filmkritik from June 1981; republished in: I've had enough! - Texts 1976–1985 - Writings, Volume 4 , pp. 295-298, ISBN 978-3-96098-226-5 .
- ↑ TV magazine TV Spielfilm , No. 10, April 29, 2020: program announcement Tip of the Day , TV Spielfilm Verlag GmbH, Hamburg. P. 71
- ↑ a b Quoted from: Töteberg (Hrsg.): Metzler Filmlexikon . P. 1
- ↑ Out of breath. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ film show. Organ of the Catholic Film Commission for Austria . Volume 11, January 28, 1961, p. 4715
- ^ Andreas Kilb in Paris, France ( Memento from March 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). In: Die Zeit , August 4, 1989
- ↑ Out of breath on cinema.de
- ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband Munich, Review No. 465/1960.
- ↑ Focus , November 25, 2002