Breathless

Introduction

The blogpost this week for us is to find out the French New Wave elements that could be found in the movie Breathless, which is a French film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard in year 1960. By that, the goal of this post for me is to study about this movie, watch it, and get to know about what theory is used in it which showed the semantic and syntactic approach to genres for the film. Along my study of this film, by accomplishing my goal, I would also have an attempt to determine the French New Wave elements that would be found in film by stating it out in the analysis section of my post.

Theory Discussion

Talking about genre, it come with semantic and syntactic, in which the semantic is basically things or parts that are expected in the genre of a film, while in which the syntactic is the ideology of the certain genre. To separate semantic and syntactic views accurately, we can easily differentiate between the generic definition of both. Basically, semantics contain areas such as the setting of location, character, also the props or materials that need to be use in the film. These are the things what usually give the film their generic genre traits, for example the genre’s common traits, scenes’ attitudes, ways of shooting, specific locations, commonly used sets and so on. According to Rick Altman (1984), he stated that, while the semantic approach has little explanatory power, it is applicable to a larger number of films. Conversely, the syntactic approach surrenders broad applicability in return for the ability to isolate a genre's specific meaning-bearing structures. For instance, semantic approach stresses the building blocks of one genre, while when syntactic approach might focus more on arranging the structures.

As for the evolutionary part that we have discussed in class, I guess every genre also need to know where and how each genre should be at and stay, but production teams must have extremely creative ideas even if they are making the same genre kind of movies again and again to attract and lock the audiences. No matter how time changes, the genre will only increase but not decrease and the ideas must be keep being innovative and unique unless films these days will have no improvement at all. There are always universal traits for each genre to be passed down generations by generations because they are to keep the origin and meaning of each genre.

Synopsis

This story is about a guy who is given the name Michel Poiccard who always do whatever he wants. He models Humphrey Bogart’s characters in the movies as daily basis, behaviours included stealing stuffs, cheating, using woman and others. Due to his criminal activities, he works under aliases. One day while he is being chased by policemen in the French countryside while he is driving a stolen vehicle, he eventually shoots one of the policemen dead. Having only dated casually over the last month, Patricia is unaware of Michel's criminal activities. She is concurrently dating another American journalist. Michel, who is trying to get money owed to him from some of his associates, wants Patricia to run off with him to Rome, all the while seemingly cavaliers about the fact that his name and photograph are in the local media as a cop killer. When Patricia eventually learns about Michel being wanted by the police, she must decide where her allegiances lie.

Analysis

French New Wave, as known as French Nouvelle Vague is a film movement that took place in the history of cinema started in 1959 and then ended in 1969 which mainly is literary adaptation such as fiction tales, or stories published in books for instance like Twilights. In 1950s, it often comes out in reality shows or documentaries. This movement adapted montage aesthetic in the way of editing like continuity editing.

For acting part, both the main lead actors in this film are first time acting thus they are not consider professional yet in this film. Secondly, most of the dialogue in the film is improvised dialogue which means that basically it is reflecting the conversation that we are having in rea life, making the film more realistic and near us. I also found romance part at the scene where the actor said, “you got me at ‘hello’”, which is also known as stage conversation that we do not use in real life conversation.

For aesthetic part, this movie is being really obvious about its jump cuts like really a lot. For example, the part where male lead complimenting female lead on the car, the jump cuts are being used from line to line and it brings uncomfortable in vision for the audience to watch at the parts as it doesn’t match perfectly from scene to scene. The location for this film is a lot too and basically the whole thing is known as location shooting too. They also used some lighting technique like using available light to shoot such as scenes in the cinema, in the toilet, and while they are in the lift too. Handheld camera is being used in the film too for instance is the scene where they walk along the street together and the angle is right in front of them. The handheld part is kind of shaky as it is not stable. Also, tracking shot happens in film at the scene where the actor carries newspaper and leave the telephone booth.

Conclusion

I kind of not really fully understand the whole movie as I think I only get to know some parts what this film is trying to say. Overall I think this movie is not bad as I get to learn a lot of techniques and movements throughout this film.

References
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053472/combined
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-breathless-1960