An “independent” film is only so if it is independent minded. The most scrappy, handheld, no-budget, shot on stolen location, non-actors playing realistic characters can still reiterate the status quo and be dull and pointless.
John Huston made more independent films than most and those were studio movies with Academy Award winning cast and crew.
John Cassavetes tried for a year to fix the shitty sound on his first feature.
Lynne Ramsay and
Jim Jarmusch still shoot on film. The films by these directors are independent in their guts, not their tools.
Jean-Luc Godard is independent because his films have soul.
A unique film when it was made,
Breathless has been ripped-off for decades. (as Criterion puts it: “There was before
Breathless, and there was after
Breathless.”) Still enjoyable for its landmark style; jump cuts within long takes, handheld camerawork, switching between documentary-style drama and Hollywood genre… its crazy but the film is still fresh almost 50 years later. The camerawork is gorgeous, handheld but flowing. No-light film still looks better than video. The editing doesn’t confuse you, it allows you to think.
Breathless is an independent classic in style, but more so in form. A film about people treading love, slipped into a crime story with no blood but a bombastic, wonderful genre soundtrack.
Jean-Paul Belmondo will win every man, woman and child over as the lovable but unlucky small-time car thief. His amour
Jean Seberg isn’t sure she wants him but keeps him around. She spawned a look and free attitude that is still being strived for today. In the film it looks effortless. A film breathless in beauty and love, and a breathless crime drama.
Extras extra extras. Interviews (from the 60s) with director Jean-Luc Godard, and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and director
Jean-Pierre Melville, who has a cameo in the film, are short but really great time capsules. New video interviews with cinematographer
Raoul Coutard, assistant director
Pierre Rissient, and filmmaker
D. A. Pennebaker are longer and solid. New video essays by filmmaker and critic
Mark Rappaport (on Jean Seberg) and critic
Jonathan Rosenbaum ("Breathless as Film Criticism") reference earlier notes by both but are essential to this collection. The trailer is amazing as expected, and see where the Godard-Belmondo dynamic duo started with the 1959 short film
Charlotte et son Jules. The dvd booklet has cool writings from Godard.
Two more things – they have redone the subtitles to better reflect the slang of the original dialogue. This is great, as subtitles often end up as strict English translation and you have to hope the voices carry the meaning often ruined in the process. And a big extra is a feature doc on the film,
Chambre 12, Hotel de suede, an eighty-minute French documentary about the making of
Breathless, with members of the cast and crew. Those interviews are great. But you will have to jump over the hurdle of the constant onscreen presence of the doc’s host/filmmaker. Somehow they worked the making-of the doc into the doc itself. Overall this 2-disc set is as great as you’d expect.
Available now from Criterion Collection, $39.95, cheaper from their
website.
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# posted by Mike Plante @ 11/12/2007 02:16:00 PM
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