I haven't seen enough of the recently departed French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's work to give him any kind of authoritative or comprehensive tribute, but somewhere along the way I did catch 1960's Breathless, a Gallic take on the young-lovers/criminals-on-the-run movie, a genre that goes back to at least 1941's High Sierra. In fact, in Breathless, actor Jean-Paul Belmondo's character Michel consciously patterns himself after Sierra's leading man, Humphrey Bogart. That's Belmondo on the far right. The young woman with the pixie haircut standing next to him is American actress Jean Seberg. Hollywood had been trying for the previous few years to make her a star, without much luck. One of those Hollywood attempts, Bonjour Tristesse, with David Niven and Deborah Kerr, was actually shot in France. While there, Seberg met a citizen of that country, got married, and stayed behind, though she continued acting. Godard cast Seberg as Patricia, quite appropriately an American emigre in Breathless, which finally, and deservedly, made her a star. As for Godard, that's the guy on (again quite appropriately) the left, holding a script in one hand and pushing the wheelchair with the other. Godard had been a film critic who decided he'd like to make films himself. After a few well-received shorts, he got the chance to do a screenplay written (the first draft, anyway) by fellow film critic, and future filmmaker, Francois Truffaut. Though both Truffaut and Godard meant Breathless to be a kind of tribute to Hollywood crime movies (1948's They Live by Night, directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Farley Granger, may have been another influence) Godard decided to film it documentary-style, which meant everything shot on location, bare minimum lighting, and a hand-held camera. The latter brings us to the fellow in the wheelchair, cinematographer Raoul Coutard. While it would be nice to say that Godard is giving a disabled person a chance to work in the French film industry, that's not what's going on at all. Godard didn't want the whole film to be herky-jerky, especially during tracking shots (an extended scene done in a single take), which is what you would get with a hand-held camera no matter how steady the hand holding it. Normally, this would mean mounting the camera on a dolly, but Godard thought that might be too time-consuming, so he just had Coutard play invalid instead. Godard is said to have been a committed Marxist, and since Coutard was his employee, let's hope the chair was at least comfy.
Makes you want to run out and get a copy of the Herald Tribune, huh? But you might have to go online.
