Though I do feel guilty only giving this a 6. In some ways, however, it does not even deserve that. Godard was a great critic. Verbally at first. Then spent his life criticizing movies with a camera. Probably out of boredom with the essential insubstantiality of almost every movie ever made. Here you can almost hear him perpetually yelling at behind the camera, well life is boring but not when you rev it up with a Mitchell at 24 frames a second.
That said, I am grateful to something like Breathless. There has still been no movie quite like it. Its innocence is really astonishing. Not sure if anyone here ever mentioned (while allowing for the tremendous influence of the film) if Bonnie and Clyde would ever have remotely looked or sounded like it did without this precursor. And Bonnie and Clyde is another movie that I am extremely ambivalent about, another guilty pleasure, feeling both movies fall very short of greatness. But both really are a lot of fun.
If any part of Breathless bothers me more than the rest it is the last, the scene where Patricia starts practically yodeling to herself about why she turned Michel in. And then almost everything after that. Here Godard tries to finally give reasons for these lunkheads actions and betrays the film.
Still.
Right.
Glad he made the thing.
Just don't get too involved in the philosophy which is ridiculous, mostly. Very great look at Paris though. And maybe the best home movie ever made.
That said, I am grateful to something like Breathless. There has still been no movie quite like it. Its innocence is really astonishing. Not sure if anyone here ever mentioned (while allowing for the tremendous influence of the film) if Bonnie and Clyde would ever have remotely looked or sounded like it did without this precursor. And Bonnie and Clyde is another movie that I am extremely ambivalent about, another guilty pleasure, feeling both movies fall very short of greatness. But both really are a lot of fun.
If any part of Breathless bothers me more than the rest it is the last, the scene where Patricia starts practically yodeling to herself about why she turned Michel in. And then almost everything after that. Here Godard tries to finally give reasons for these lunkheads actions and betrays the film.
Still.
Right.
Glad he made the thing.
Just don't get too involved in the philosophy which is ridiculous, mostly. Very great look at Paris though. And maybe the best home movie ever made.