Breathless Essay

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Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless is often regarded one of the earliest films exhibiting the French New Wave style of cinema due to its influence on the movement and innovation by the producers. One of the most noticeable edits that Godard does in Breathless is the jump-cuts made frequently during conversations, and other times when one would expect continuity, in order to break up the flow of story to the audience and force them to actively participate on understanding the progression of events. This is quite contrary to the typical Hollywood style of film editing as transitions between shots are usually smoothed over as much as possible so that the audience focuses solely on the plot events transpiring on the screen rather than the editing Godard breaks free from the mould countless times throughout the film in order to force the audience to pay attention to the editing as well as the progression of the plot in order to achieve a lack of continuity within and between scenes. His decisions were in part due to the producers asking that he shorten the film but also to his decision to create the sense of discontinuity present throughout the film. One such way that he breaks from away is through the use of nonprofessional actors and handheld cameras in order to achieve a more documentary style of storytelling while also allotting him a great deal of flexibility in deciding what and where to film the shots, allowing him to improvise regularly. Traditionally, filmmakers would attempt to make transitions and edits of scenes to be as seamless and unnoticible as possible, such is not the case with Godard, who insists on having jarring cuts even within a single conversation, often changing the angle and juxtapositioning between actors and objects in the scene. We first see these most prevalently when Michael first confronts and murders the police officer where there are continuous cuts between himself, the officer, and various objects such as the gun where the positioning of each are swapped between cuts, causing a sense of confusion for the audience. Scenes such as these become commonplace throughout the film and offer insights into both the characters and the themes of the film as a

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