“The most boring movie is the one that happens in the present tense,” Godard said. And in his film “On the Last Breath”, he completely deprived the viewer of any idea of the passage of time. We can only guess how many days have passed since meeting the hero Jean Paul Belmondo before the finale. Probably three, but it's not certain. We do not even understand how much time the characters spent under the white sheet, which covered their heads in an attempt to hide from the surrounding reality. 5 minutes, 30 or 3 hours.
Yes, Godard masterfully circumvented the principle of unity of place and action. We see the hero, the Jumpcat, and here he is in a completely different situation. And we watch with interest the movements that this film literally breathes. The hero of Belmondo - Michel Poaccard - all the time runs - he now goes by car, then walks through the streets of Paris - and this movement does not tire the viewer, but only more involves in the story.
Paris is a full-fledged hero of the film. Its lively streets with real Parisians (not mass scene actors!), its dynamic course of life, people running somewhere, cyclists passing by and cars - all this works for history.
At some point, we get so carried away with this endless movement in the frame that watching it becomes like the main goal - we forget why all this is necessary and just run with our eyes after the frames.
Godard’s unique cinematic language became a symbol of the denial of the existing industrial rules of cinema in the 60s. Young authors called the existing canons the principles of “daddy’s cinema”, not just denying, but condemning them. Godard proved that audience interest can be won by breaking dogma. And because of that, he stayed in history.
Jean-Luc Godard’s film tells the story of a young criminal whose life is turned upside down after the murder of a police officer.
I will not lament that the film did not make a huge impression on me, despite the fact that the film is considered a classic of world cinema, as well as one of the first and most revealing films of the “new French wave”. But I will not interfere with everything in one heap, and put each aspect of the film in order.
Dramaturgy
The weakest, in my opinion, part of the film. The problem is the sea.
First, I didn’t understand why the police were looking for the main character. Throughout the film, Michelle was walking around the city, stealing cars and money, hanging out with girls, and no one caught him, no one even saw him, although, according to the main character, the whole of Paris was hunting him.
Second, I didn't really understand why Michelle was holding onto Patricia so much. Why did you give up all of a sudden? Where did "I'm tired" come from? The film does not answer these questions.
Third, there is no empathy for the hero. I don’t know about the others, but it’s hard for me personally to empathize with a scoundrel, a hypocrite and a thief, whom they didn’t even bother to show from some human side.
VISION
Here I will make subgroups:
Installation:
Perhaps the most important feature of the film is its carved montage. This is a really interesting experiment that showed how with a small number of frames (as far as I know, the crew saved on everything) you can keep the logic in the frame. But it is not clear, and why this discovery is necessary?
Acting game:
I liked the actors, especially Jean Seberg, whose face I thought we saw the most. There's not much more to say.
Camera:
It's also a good part of the movie. The work of the operator pleased me the most here. Raul Kutar masterfully wielded the camera. Long shots are taken smoothly, and the choreography is commendable. Raul also selected extremely interesting angles that diluted the plot nudity.
MUSIC:
I will describe the soundtrack in one word - boring.
CONCLUSION:
The film left a very sad impression, but to write a red review of the classics of world cinema - the hand does not rise. I also didn’t write about the lesson the film teaches us (because every piece of art teaches us something), for the simple reason that after watching it, there’s no desire to look for anything and analyze it.
There is an opinion that real art gives birth to itself, it breaks through the original plan, contrary to the process of creation, exists outside the framework and concept established by the author.
Apparently, when watching this film, we encounter exactly such a case.
Infinitely life-loving, ironic, intellectually funny film, as if appeared by chance, became more than the director was capable of in principle. During the filming, the actors were given the freedom to improvise - Belmondo and Seberg are full-fledged co-authors of the picture, perhaps that is why she jumped much higher than Godard's bald head.
There is no need to look for hidden meanings and subtexts, but this does not mean that they are not here, nor does it mean that they correspond to some idea of the author - this is the spirit of time, time, which accidentally got into the cinema lens, when humanity for the first time so massively rethought itself and managed to be disappointed in the conclusions obtained. The birth of a new ethic, the reformatting of society and the family, the post-war apathy and the sexual revolution that has already taken place, but is no longer accompanied by embarrassment and aversion - and to all this there is the answer, the protest, the synchronized grimace of Belmondo and Seberg, "to open your mouth, smile, frown," as if these two invented a new absurd anti-language for more accurate communication and transmission of all the newly found truths bogged in the reflection of the world.
The plot is profanation, a sticky substance between parody pathos existentialist replicas in the spirit of the inadvertently ridiculed Sartre, in which there is nothing but delusions (the episode on the roof with the interview of the heroine Seberg) and second glances, touches, fools of two people, through which the ringing, naive truth of life rushes to each other.
You will not forget the scene in the hotel, although you will not remember a single word.
The main characters, the plot, the voiced themes are thoroughly parody. The actors communicate with each other on top of the decorative script, with the help of some electric waves that break through pauses in radiant-idiotic phrases, they throw replicas with Paris, American cars, a stream of fussy crowds, this silent adverb adds a rhythm section to jazz accompaniment, this language is understandable to any viewer who is able to fall in love with someone’s back of the head in the middle of a white day.
The New York Herald Tribuné!
The New York Herald Tribuné!
French "new wave" in cinema or youth and love in Paris in the era of Godard!
One of the leading directors of the French “new wave” is Jacques-Luc Godard. The features of Godard’s films include the following: a new technique of editing, where the picture does not break while the soundtrack on the background is not interrupted; a dynamic “handheld” camera that captures broader (general) plans that reveal the context of each scene; interesting for viewing bold and slightly vulgar themes of interpersonal relationships that affect personal and intimate issues (which were not yet public for discussion in the movie); long dialogues that from scene to scene about the mundane.
The film “On the Last Breath” (1960) is one of the first films of this era in the genre of criminal drama, dedicated to the relationship of all men and women in the person of the creative duo Patricia Francoini American student (Gene Seaberg) and Michel Poaccard French adventurer (Jean-Paul Belmondo). It is noteworthy that the main character of the film is directly connected with Godard himself and, accordingly, the main character is associated with the artist Sobalesco on the one hand, and on the other hand with the journalist at the level of internal quotes and general replicas.
The film "on the last breath" looks in one breath. More than half a century has passed, but it is impossible to say that the film is outdated. Dynamic scenes, good editing, interesting dialogues and a criminal plot, all this catches and holds attention.
Special attention should be paid to the aesthetics of the film and the sense of taste, which are manifested in each frame and scene. Some scenes are staged wonderfully, the first joint scene of the two main characters almost in the center of Paris and the final dramatic scene.
Godard sanctifies the main problems of society as an artist. He puts on display, touching on rather philosophical themes of individual freedom and how it should be expressed. Moreover, in a protest form, because otherwise it is impossible, the problems of society must be solved, since each person is its representative.
The main meaning of the film is the love between a French (presumably) hijacker and an American student is expressed in an attempt to compare the images of his own work and the main character as a drowning artist, as if drawing a parallel to Godard’s creative impulse. All this is manifested in the character of the protagonist with his antisociality and an attempt to be completely free from established norms.
Let’s try to answer two questions: what is the film about? What does the ending of the movie mean? Answering the first question, one can assume that this is a biographical film where Godard, as a young French director, expresses a love for American cinema (Hollywood), but does not bow to it. Trying not to become a prisoner of those shooting standards, but to create something new from the old. And answering the second question, we can assume that the action of the main character is expressed in self-sacrifice (when she revealed her main secret to him) because of love for the main character. As Dante said, the love that turns all the lights.
The power of the “new wave” was in the arguments of three or four directors who disappeared over time. “New Wave” had no definite installations, methods, its origins were synephiles, who believed that the old cinema was deadlocked, that realism in films had become something nauseating and fake. Although Michel, answering the question of the girl with the magazines Cahiers du cinema, whether he values youth, he answers that he values only old people (nothing can be said, the cold calculation of the young director). It can be argued for a long time whether the “new wave” was aesthetically revolutionary, but to deny the revolution is technically foolish. Godard in his breakthrough film uses a documentary insert of a conversation between journalists and Melville, presented in the film as Parvulesco, with whom they manage to talk about the differences between French girls and American girls, about Brahms and Chopin. This type of conversation with the great artist Godard will develop in his best film “Contempt”, when Fritz Lang will talk to film workers in the viewing room about Greek culture and the purpose of art.
The “new wave” had opponents, such as Georges Frangeu, who called the current “fake”, but it is hard to argue that it got into the very essence of time, giving the art of cinema such a welcome breath of fresh air. A little imitating John Ford with his painstaking documentary and noir films, Godard creates an imitation of reality. Heroes Belmondo and Seberg in the course of their thoughts and actions are ready to baffle the inhabitants. The creation of a special film space, which Bazin spoke about, based on in-frame editing, creates an opportunity to watch the birth of a new world through the eyes of outsiders. In fact, Belmondo plays similar characters in Last Breath and Mad Piero, in the latter he is, however, more poetic with his allegories about the moon and the beauty of Anna Karin.
Both of them are moving towards their own death. Michelle, however, is a more tired character, and requires eternal sleep, but Ferdinand at the last moment realizes the recklessness of his action, but too late. Michelle is an outsider out of nowhere, although he creates the areola of a loving macho who once worked for Chinechitta. He is impatient on the roads, hates the sun, does not like soldiers, and the world around him looks carefree. His carelessness excites me. Georges Sadoul called Godard's film "The Embankment of Mists" for 1960, but Belmondo's character is more tired of life than Jean, although he likes to crook. Heroes of the film throw words like fantasy, which can be safely broken into quotes. Michelle breaks women’s romantic dreams about Romeo and Juliet, Patricia jokes about her pregnancy and watches Michel’s reaction.
They just play hide-and-seek on the bed, they play hide-and-seek on the street and in the cinema and the way out of it is an eternal dream, because Michelle caught the lines from Faulkner's Wild Palms, and now his life philosophy is that sadness is a compromise and the way out is nothingness. Godard, with references and explicit borrowing of scenes from the same film, “The Injuncting Law,” does not engage in plagiarism, but rather reconstructs the universe of the cinema world in Godard’s way. There is also a mention of "Bob - the burner of life" by Melville. You can make a whole theory with riddles disguised as references to Ingrid Bergman or the work of Rossellini. Godard was ahead of time, creating his reality in the world of cinema with the possibility of combining classical genres in a new author’s vision.
It's 1960. A time of great change in world cinema. In the Soviet Union, thawing cinema is gradually stabilizing the industry after Stalinist times, while Britain and Japan are roaring their own new waves. And finally France. A year ago, François Truffaut’s masterpiece of 400 strokes was released and won universal recognition by critics and spectators. His friend and colleague, with whom they worked together on the editorial board of the magazine Kaye Du Cinema Jean Luc Godard is also an ardent fan of cinema, to the dust carrying French cinema of those years, releases to the audience a revolutionary film for its time.
What can I say? The first word that came to me when viewing this masterpiece is ease. The film simply breaks all the established dogmas of cinema. From the screen with a calm face with his alluring signature smile, Jean Paul Belmondo will easily break the fourth wall as if it were normal. And the shots in the film are sliced as if the editing was done by an inept cook for the first time holding a knife in his hands. (In fact, Cecile Decougie, the most famous editor of the time, was responsible for the editing without whom the New Wave would not exist as we know it today.) Yes, it may alienate the average viewer accustomed to studio sequential and styling pictures, but the film was not created for them. In the last breath, this film is freedom. It is unlimited in povilions (almost the entire film is shot on life), and oddly enough is not limited even to the plot. For the characters can hang on the floor of the film in the apartment of gin Seberg and just think about everything. The camera of Raoul Kutra is not limited in movement creates a flying, free and expressive composition in its own way.
It is pointless to go into the details of the plot because you simply need to watch yourself, which is not surprising. This film was the voice of a generation. Against the background of political events taking place at that time (for example, the war in Algeria - a plot to which French directors have repeatedly touched), Godard conveyed to the viewer the idea that the world is on the verge of great changes. The days of glossy private melodramas are over, there comes a time of revolution in the minds of people and in the very understanding of cinema. This movie is an impulse. The movie is a feeling. Tune in to his wave, and you may as well fall in love with the back of Jean Seberg's head.
The first film of one of the most influential directors of the French new wave and not only - Jacques-Luc Godard. It is also one of the first and most important films of this direction, the influence of which went far beyond the borders of France and changed all subsequent cinema and its creators.
A young man named Michelle is a real burner of life, going into a public toilet he can easily rob a person standing next to him to take a girl to a restaurant, and on the way home safely steal someone else's car. Michelle meets a girl whom she has recently slept with, strikes up a dialogue with her, and gradually gets closer, in the course of this rapprochement between them, it seems, real love is formed. But all this can be prevented by the fact that Michel is all wanted by the police, as he the day before, out of fear or by chance, shot a patrolman who stopped him because of a violation of traffic rules.
The picture seems to come from nowhere, no credits, no bright visual style (which, however, makes the picture incredibly bright), no big budget, no clear narrative that could be divided into standard first second and third acts, the lives of the characters and the characters themselves do not live inside the film, they go beyond its beginning and its end, this is its absolutely brilliant feature, it only shows life, and does not create it artificially for the big screen.
Because of the revolutionary editing, the picture does not look like a single stream, which would greatly simplify it, but on the contrary, it is broken into hundreds of small equally significant pieces, and it turns out that looking at it, you look through a kaleidoscope, and such a simple reality, which we all observe daily, becomes something incredible, beautiful pattern, which is only a prism of the real world, and thanks to which you begin to appreciate this world, the world in which every detail acquires its meaning. It reminds me of the feeling when the emotional state reaches its peak, and with every second of being, reality becomes more and more voluminous, and then in an instant all this disappears, and the flow of time becomes something drab, straight and ordinary. The film perfectly conveys that feeling. And amazing as the action in pieces, looks more smooth, and better conveys the flow of time than usual.
This film is incredible at least because of how Jacques-Luc Godard managed with such a small budget to fill the picture with the whole spectrum of emotions and feelings, it turned out because Godard did not try to artificially create them, which requires a large budget, but only captured real life. In this case, the film is completely different from reality, it squeezes the maximum out of it, conveying only the most important and exciting aspects of it, and again, if you go back to my words above, the film seems to show us real life through the prism of a kaleidoscope. And this is the completely revolutionary discovery of this film, what looks like life on the screen turns out to be completely different from it, and vice versa, we see reality not as it really is, our consciousness and imagination will change it in every possible way.
And these dialogues... So caustic, so weighty, each line has more meaning than some hours of conversation. They are filled to the brim with subtexts, and as if erasing between what we say and what we feel the line, and seem to reveal to us the real meaning of the words we say in everyday life, one scene in Patricia's apartment is all that we call relationships, all the experiences of passion of desire that we experience in relationships with our partners, and so on are put into one big scene.
One of the most revealing episodes of the picture in my opinion, and the only one in which Godard is as straightforward as possible, and visually emphasizes the difference between text and subtext, which by the way is very similar to how Hitchcock creates his films, is when Patricia shows Michelle a picture, and speculating about her asks him questions while he is at that moment busy completely different, her buttocks, and answering her questions he implies not a picture, but her buttocks.
“No random little thing can make love sublime,” says the heroine of the film, which was watched by our main characters, these words go against what is now happening to the main characters, because after all the events in the previous scene, it seems that their love has become sublime, this director wants to say that all the same in life there is the sublime, and this even despite the cynicism that the author and his characters have, this scene works better than any philosophical nonsense that can be heard on such topics, while it does not show us something incredible, which is not something that a person can encounter with reality, as an ordinary scene and an erasure us.
Manual shooting, torn editing, which violates absolutely all the standard rules of such, the absence of any credits, except for the initial “this film is dedicated to the film company Monogram Pictures”, and the standard “end” at completion, caustic meaningful dialogues, all this creates in the coupe an immersion in what is happening, which is comparable only with a dream, or with the very real reality.
You can forget all the text written above, watch the movie yourself, and draw conclusions about it, and here is a phrase that in my opinion fully conveys the magnificence of the film, no, it is not a certain apotheosis of the shown, it is not a key plot, it does not sum up like “something dreams are made of” from the Maltese Falcon, and does not express the whole meaning as “and why all this?” For the money?' from Fargo, but it will make you look at this undoubtedly great picture.
- What is your dream, what are your dreams?
- Become immortal and then die.
And the whole film is replete with such barbs, incredibly easy to perceive, and at the same time heavy in meaning.
But for all the magnificence that was described above, the picture as a whole causes a very great feeling of rejection, which most likely was done on purpose, this can be understood from the most recent frame of the film, when Patricia with disgust and some kind of misunderstanding literally looks the viewer in the eye, breaking the fourth wall, after making possible the most disgusting act in her life.
10 out of 10
"In the last breath": How the French New Wave Began
In Last Breath (1960) was one of the first films of the French New Wave. It was played by the late Jean Paul Belmondo. She became the first for the actor and subsequently made him a star in the world of cinema.
The picture is very exciting with its dynamism. Already by name it is clear that its plot shows life “to the fullest”. Here you and the “mad” hero of a new type, for which there are no moral obstacles, and the fatal “femme fatale”, as well as the dangerous and playful duality of their ties.
Separately, it is worth noting the game of Belmondo. She's very impressive and unique. Delicate play of words, skillful "kickbacks" to girls, incredible charisma of the character, his indomitability before any obstacles on the way to his goal. All this can not fail to bribe the viewer.
And, of course, special attention deserves the Male element, which is embodied in it. Perhaps the whole world is against the main character, but he is against the whole world, and this warms his blood. He demonstrates a very strong personality, capable of resisting the external pressure of society, embodied in law and order.
Although he is not a character with high moral values, he is a strong-willed person and therefore represents the highest type of male sexuality. And the light erotic scenes in the film only emphasize this main feature of his character.
Of the disadvantages can be noted broken installation. And in general, there is a noticeable amateur shooting, with which the French “New Wave” began. But the inner breathing of the film is so strong that you can ignore it. As an object of real art, the painting has an infectious power of spirit.
It is valuable both as a historical film document and as an emotionally meaningful product. And so it looks the same as it is called - "in the last breath."
10 out of 10
Godard the prophet, Godard the maximalist, Godard the poet, Godard the philosopher. As one intelligent person said, it is important for an artist to have guidelines, basic principles that determine the goal and vector of creativity, so great art is born. Jean-Luc Godard is exactly the case when the author understands 200 percent of what he is doing, without doubting the exhausting search for his tasks in art, the first feature-length film of the director of the new wave is a perfect confirmation of this.
At first glance, the narrative is simple - a love story, crime, Bonnie and Clyde, a Hollywood boring story, but in the middle of the film there is a protracted dialogue between Michel (Belmondo) and Patricia (Jean Seaberg), which makes it clear that the film goes beyond the genres, clichés, and other things inherent in bad cinema. When asked by a young American woman about the choice between sadness and non-existence, Michelle replies that he would choose nothingness, since sadness is stupidity, compromise (Godar is a maximalist), and later repeats: ' nothing is worse than cowardice. ..' The hero of the French director is a marginal, free, convinced, fearless, in love, alive, as the embodiment of his cinema.
There are a lot of things in the film that are gentle, touching, and affectionate, like when Michelle makes faces to explain to Patricia what it means ' pout' 'When you are frightened or surprised, or both, you have a strange shine in your eyes - and because of this shine I love you ' or another sweetness ' We look at each other, but none of it comes out' (Godar is a poet).
Structurally, the film can be represented as a thesis (rather a lot of them) and the story itself, a thesis that echoes history, brings out social problems, namely, that modern culture increasingly divides men and women from each other. In one of the first scenes, Michelle mentions a story from the newspaper, consonant with the story of the film - about a young bandit who committed crimes because of love and a girl who became an accomplice for the same motives, the only difference is that the story of Michel and Patricia ends not so romantic, a man and a woman can not love each other as before, because love limits the freedom of the young.
Girls: ' I love you, but I don't want to love you' (Godard is a prophet).
The author quotes Rilke, Faulkner, in general, the film is not for nothing called a new wave, it is really a new cinema, a new art.
' What is the main purpose of your life?
- Become immortal and then die.39
' On the last breath' Jean-Luc Godard is an incredibly atmospheric in its style and depth criminal drama. The picture pleasantly pleases the eye with high-quality shooting and editing, non-trivial script and bold script moves. The film is brilliantly directed. I will note the well-written dialogues. Godard’s work raises many relevant issues to this day. I liked the director’s message to the audience. Perfectly coped with their roles charismatic Jean-Paul Belmondo and beautiful Jean Seberg. Great picture, which added to my very large list 'Favorite movies'.
If you're a sophisticated filmmaker, you probably already know if you should watch this movie. If you are an ordinary person and want to understand whether you should watch it, I will tell you now.
1. If you're a maiden -- er, er, you're a Belmondo, you're definitely worth it. He is young here and plays his young villain very well, convincingly.
2. I recommend the boys to look carefully at the main character in advance. And if you are like me, then you will be fine. There is a lot of it on the screen and slowly. That short haircut! Oh, that inner sloppiness.
If neither, then I do not know. In principle, all the actors are selected very well and play well. The plot from the series “a fairy tale for older adolescents”, and with some skewed towards romanticization of the gentry. Well, for "listen, open your mouth and forget" - good. Freshly told.
Warning. In the center of screen time - a conversation between the hero and the heroine about almost nothing. If you don't mind watching any of them, you can rewind. Then there will be a tie and denouement, without much loss to understand the plot and they are OK.
“A new wave is coming!” wrote Françoise Giroud, France’s future culture minister, in the 1957 issue of Express. And she wasn't wrong. Young directors came and began to wet everything that they hated in the old cinema: staged scenes, pavilion shootings and neat editing.
One of the instigators of the revolution, Jean-Luc Godard, did nothing but visit film clubs. He absorbed everything that was played in salons and published his reviews in magazines. At some point, he decided to make films himself. Critics were shocked, because before to become a director you had to learn, not just love movies.
Within a few years, French self-taught people had shaken the film industry. But the interesting thing is that it took a little while and they all went into commerce. The same Godard already in 1963 made the film “Contempt” with Bridget Bardot in the title role. For “Contempt” he got the contempt of his colleagues, but over time, many of them also began to work with large studios and fit into the system of film production.
But Godard’s first full-length film “In Last Breath” is a vivid example of new wave films, challenging the usual cinema of the time. The main role in the film was played by Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.
He's Michelle, a car thief. He also steals everything that lies badly and kills a person in between. She is Patricia, an American living in Paris. We're going to watch the whole movie as these two walk around the capital. Michelle will occasionally commit crimes, and Patricia will go about her business.
Belmondo smokes endlessly - try to find one scene without a cigarette. Seaberg haircut after the release of the film became so popular that even the term “haircut Siberg” appeared.
The editing in the film is ragged, it constantly seems that the director cut the pieces. And he actually cut them out. The movie was too long and Godard just cut it here and there.
And yet, when the heroes walk around the city, you can see how passers-by constantly turn on them. This is also not without reason - real passers-by stare at the actors. Godard filmed low-budget - 400,000 francs or about $80,000 in 1960 prices.
Interestingly, Belmondo at that time was not yet a highly paid actor, the largest fee of $ 150,000 took Seberg.
What makes this movie attractive today? Here you can see the real, not stylized Paris of the 60s. People walk on wide roads, huge cars scurry around. It's a pedestrian zone right now. But the cafes are the same as today.
In the episode, Godard himself played - he is a man who points to the police at Michel. Jean-Luc is 89 years old and still working. Of course, cinema is his passion.
In attempts to turn a movie camera into a pen, according to the behests of Alexander Astryuk, it is very easy to turn the wrong way and turn it into a broom. This effect is sometimes produced by innovative experiments with form in the picture of Godard. What is the purpose of all this deliberately planned negligence – the effect of reality, documentary, or, on the contrary, drawing attention to the cinematic flow of consciousness, emphasizing the difference between what is happening on the screen and in the audience? One thing is clear - the excessive use of all these techniques only distracts from the very built reality in 24 frames per second. In general, this style can be very successfully applied, but sometimes a trembling camera in simple following the actors and inappropriate jump cuts are justified only by the unrestrained desire of the director-debutant, yesterday’s print critic, tired of the bronze form of narrative, to break the shackles of outdated thinking. With a detached look at the implementation of this new free technique, one can see how it is just getting on its feet and learning to walk. A breath of fresh air is a long scene in the bedroom, which is perceived on the last (one) breath. For the most part, free from intrusive, camera and editing techniques, conveys the whole spirit of a new wave, where sorrows prefer nothingness, where they do not accept compromises, but demand everything or nothing. And on the walls of Picasso and Renoir is just "not bad". Certain elements of the aesthetics of Paris of the 60s, like itself, the magically captured city, with its newspaper shops on every corner, leaves you in the light-filled mood of the time.
The hero is an adventurer who never turns around, who rushes forward, and in the end gets tired. Twenty years later, this will happen to the hero of Oleg Yankovsky in Flights in Dreams and Reality. The similarity of the fates of Michel Poacre and Sergei Makarov shows that in terms of content, Godard came out with a work relevant outside the temporal and historical context. Although there was his “stagnation” with which Godard fought so much, Truffaut and the team, and there came its own “perestroika”, the means of a new wave. . .
Be that as it may, trampling the road in the direction of a living and breathing image, Godard definitely succeeded in "becoming immortal, and then ... die."
“In the Last Breath” is one of the first serious works of Jean-Luc Godard and one of the first and, we can say, program paintings characterizing Nouvelle Vague – the French New Wave.
The main character, as the name rightly notes, lives “on his last breath”, this is the same type of “talented villain”, which is loved by many in modern cinema. But this is not a template hero, it is difficult for him to sympathize, at least in the first couple.
Michel Poaccard, performed by a desperately young and not even immediately recognizable Jean-Paul Belmondo, is a typical con man, a war veteran (a popular theme of a lost generation in those years) and a complete cynic. In one case, Michelle kills a police officer stalking him. From that moment, the police begin to seriously search for him and tighten their ring around him, but our hero, apparently, this is not particularly frightening, he is busy with his girlfriend – American Patricia, who wants to become a journalist.
What's "Crazy"? It's like me.
At some points, the plot risks becoming another reading of Bonnie and Clyde, but it is not. By the way, a significant part of the picture is improvisation. Godard and Truffaut (another of the founders of the “new wave” and co-writer of the film) wrote the script immediately before each shooting day, in fact “on the knee”. The narrative of the film can hardly be called classic and slender, it is as ragged as the editing of many scenes. All this is very clearly characterized by the very Nouvelle Vague - a revolution against unnaturalness and theatricality, violation of rules and norms, the search for new and fresh solutions.
Speaking about the editing, I would like to note a very bold decision at that time with absolutely crudely glued footage of the main characters traveling by car and conducting a dialogue with them. The director does not even try to make it a whole scene.
Sometimes the camera seems to begin to live “its life” and stops blindly following the main character – all this adds to the picture expressiveness and unusualness.
What is your main goal in life? Become immortal and then die.
The main characters. Both the characters themselves and the relationship between themselves. This is what the whole movie is about.
Him. As mentioned above, he is completely cynical, seeing no boundaries (again, a metaphor for the very direction of the new wave). He says what he thinks, but he doesn’t seem to think often, and if he does, it won’t last long. Human action.
And her. Performed by the charming Jean Seberg. Romantic and not yet burned by reality, quoting famous writers and dreaming of becoming one of them. What do they say, good girls like bad guys? No way. But, interestingly, the bad guy eventually falls in love with his companion. And in their (mostly improvised) dialogue, I think, one of those moments in the movie is easy to love. The clash of dreaminess and realism, romanticism and cynicism. I want to share the picture with quotes.
I think it's a bad thing to report. No, that's okay. Whistleblowers inform, thieves steal, murderers kill, lovers love.
Could this all end well? I guess. If it wasn’t the New Wave, it was Hollywood. But, as the French say, hey, hey. This is what it is.
Who should I recommend? First of all, those who really love and are interested in cinema, different and, first of all, not mass. This is not a movie that can be played in parallel with other things. But if you really sit down and try to feel the atmosphere, I'm sure this story, this picture will not leave you indifferent.
9 out of 10
We said: I am about myself, and you are about yourself, but we had to say: you are about me, and I am about you.
The first feature film by Jean-Luc Godard, avant-garde director of the French New Wave. The film that started & #39 is the Belmondo we know. Godard, perhaps, for the first time in the history of cinema, showed the state of duality of the consciousness of the hero, his romantic fleur, deliberately placing the creative component of the main character’s personality inside his everyday being (forms of his being). Thus, the actions of the hero all the time & #39; fall out & #39; from his being. However, this way of thinking is inherent in any truly creative person, writing or shooting, who projects the potentialities of the characters he created on himself. The film was an incredible success and 'Live' in many works of the New Wave. Suffice it to say that the bold point in the interpretation of this topic was no less significant in the history of French and world cinema picture of Phillippe de Broca & #39; Magnificent & #39;. Here, the duality of the hero’s consciousness is clothed in a specific plot form. Therefore, it makes no sense to say whether Michelle Poiscar is positive or negative.
The French New Wave is one of the most important trends in world cinema, which has had a significant impact on the development of cinema. One of the main faces of this wave is the French director, screenwriter and film critic Jean-Luc Godard. His films are included in various lists of the most important films in history, and the main one is this picture, which also became his directorial debut. The film has a cult status, is considered a legendary and epochal work.
Jean-Luc Godard was an experimenter in the field of filmmaking, he sought to create a new film language, sought to bypass standard rules and introduce new artistic solutions. Here and here we see the story of a young criminal Michel Pouaccard, created as if based on American noir films, but in a completely different way. By genre it is a criminal drama with elements of melodrama and comedy. The protagonist is a young rebel without reason looking for a place in the world. Being a fan of the American actor Humphrey Bogart, he tries to imitate him in his habits and appearance. At the same time, he does not care about moral norms, he commits one crime after another, which ultimately leads to a logical result.
The tape is replete with sharp turns and non-standard transitions from one action to another. Here the main character commits another crime, and in another frame we already see a long dialogue between a guy and a girl, with reflections of an almost philosophical nature and quoting famous works of culture. Quotes and references abound here. For its time, it was a very non-trivial movie that amazed the audience.
One of the most distinctive features of the tape is experimental installation. A very sharp transition from one action to another is designed to confuse the viewer, disorganize him. The hand camera of the French operator Raoul Kutar constantly follows the hero, creating the effect of documentary, as if sketching from the life of Paris of the 1960s. In addition, the main character breaks the fourth wall and addresses the viewer directly.
Jean-Paul Belmondo performed his first and iconic role, which brought him fame. He is an absolute cynic who does not disdain both petty crimes and real murder. A rebel without a reason, a guy burning through life, challenging society with its social norms with his behavior. Actress Jean Seberg plays a girl who, on the one hand, is passionate about her companion, but constantly resists his behavior.
In the last breath is an authorial, existential crime drama, filmed in a non-trivial manner and using innovative solutions. A picture in which genre stamps of American noir are played due to experimental shooting and interesting art forms. If we consider from this point of view, the tape is certainly an important work in cinema. However, now the film does not cause a strong impression and looks quite calm. Anyone interested in the history of cinema is definitely worth a look.
I don’t know why everyone is praising this movie, it’s definitely a very good performance, everybody’s doing great, but just because the actors are playing 9 or 10 is too stupid. The plot itself is mega boring and tedious, the main character seems to be a criminal who killed a policeman and is being chased, but he acts so serenely and calmly, as if he did nothing. I never wanted to look at the relationship between lovers, but that’s what the movie is about. During the scene in bed, I almost turned off the film, because the more tedious moment is still worth looking for. And I don’t mind a lot of talk in the film, Quentin Tarantino is one of my favorite directors, but the dialogue in this film is tedious and causes nothing but a desire to turn the film off and never turn it on again. Genres of this movie: drama, crime, but when you watch the film you think that it is more like a melodrama, not a crime film. Until the very end I thought that something would happen that would change my opinion about this film and I will say that this film can rightly be called a masterpiece, but nothing happened. The final turn is absolutely readable and until the last I did not want to believe that it will happen, because it is an incredibly banal plot twist and can not surprise a person who has watched at least 50 films of the genre – crime, but, unfortunately, it is exactly what happens.
Bottom line: if you wanted to see a film about a criminal who is trying to run away from the police, on interesting and exciting plot twists, on the graters between the police and the criminal, on the shootouts, then there is none of this, but there is a relationship between a man and a woman, if this is what you were looking for – go ahead, here it is in bulk, but I did not come to look at it.
4 out of 10
Godard’s full-length debut and years later remains his most popular painting. What is the reason for this mass worship not only among sinophiles, but also among ordinary spectators? Probably in its accessibility, external simplicity and unpretentiousness of the story told, with all the philosophical and cinematic connotations with which Godard loaded it. For all that, it is a “new wave” in its most concentrated expression, that is, the movie is light with all the existential weights it raises. Despite the criminal outlines given to it by Godard in imitation of the American noirs, which he loved so much, it is still first of all a love story, which became in the eyes of baby boomers the emblem of the great Feeling.
The main thing is that before us is not the analytical Godard movie, to which we are so used, but the film myth, whose charms are not borrowed from Hollywood, but invented by the director anew, out of nothing. Having come to the analysis of this film legend, I understand that all my knowledge and analytical skills for reading Godard are lacking here. Why? I never thought this movie was the best in his biography. But the effect that it has years later (and I watched it as a teenager on TV) paradoxically rhymes with another great masterpiece of cinema, Last Tango in Paris. Since no one, as far as I know, has written about it, I will limit my analysis to these parallels, unable to analyze this movie myth as a whole.
The relationship of the Belmondo-Siberg heroes is not just quoted by Bertolucci in the Brando-Schneider pair, but the men and women of these couples behave similarly. Women are afraid of everything new, fascinated by the brutal charm of their men, but eventually betray them, unable to withstand the fact that they are truly loved. Men at first flaunt their apparent indifference, rude and charming in difficult situations, they are, simply speaking, cool, but falling in love become soft and lose everything they have won.
Of course, Michelle is not Paul in the full sense, he is not yet desperate for life, cynicism and hatred of the world, but Paul is a disillusioned Michelle in life, who lost his trademark “new wave” ease. But Patricia and the heroine Schneider (I forget her name) are much more alike, they are bourgeois and timid under male pressure, although they like him. Michel and Patricia meet on the road as she shouts in English, "New York Harold Tribune," as he approaches her and strikes up the conversation to a jazz tune. It is also remembered as the first intimacy of Bertolucci’s heroes in an empty house.
How do you analyze film mythology? Will we break her spell? But we have to make some kind of analysis of this picture, right? Therefore, I will say that never again was Godrov’s jump cut so organic and natural as here: there is still no undivided power behind-the-scenes commentary, as it became in “Little Soldier”, there is no complex intellectualism (Poincar is not an intellectual), quotes from books (there are plenty of them from films, but you have to be from Godard’s generation to see them all), the story is simple, chamber and unpretentious.
Belmondo then no one really knew, but nothing better he did not play: the image sits on him as infused, brutal naturalness, coupled with the very character of Poincar makes him a sex symbol for millions of women. Also, Seaberg, playing an emancipated American intellectual who reads Faulkner, and even stylish with a short haircut, is not a multifaceted Anna Karina, who is able to play both the complex transformation of Nana from a simpleton to a prostitute, and a provincial chicken in the “Separate Gang”. However, it is these images-types, and not, for example, the heroes of “Mad Piero”, overloaded with philosophy, became the symbols of a generation.
In a key scene, when Patricia reads to Michel the finale of Faulkner’s novel: “Between sadness and non-existence, I choose sadness,” and asks what he chooses, he answers without hesitation: “Non-existence, because sadness is a compromise.” This is the key to understanding why Godard became the favorite director of baby boomers, why he expressed his aspirations and delusions more fully than anyone else: he follows Sartre, who also became one of the protesters in '68, and chooses Nothing as a testing ground for experimentation, not the existing Being. The bourgeoisie are content with the world of objects, “being-in-itself”, they are wingless and uncreative, therefore they are satisfied with the existing state of affairs, and they are ready to defend it.
But their kids, the baby boomers, chose nothingness, nothingness, to build something that didn't yet exist, to reinvent the world, they didn't like Faulkner's sadness as a compromise, they needed drive and drive to recreate the world. A decade later, they might be filled with despair, like Paul in The Last Tango, realizing that it didn’t work out, but that faith in the future was needed to move the world forward, and he did move (though in the wrong direction). So the life experiments of goshists, beatniks and hippies were needed. Which means Godard was needed.
Either this youthful ego plays with its colors, or ego, left without parental money. In any case, superficial opinion projects the first full-length picture of the Franco-Swiss director as something volitional and at the same time - forged. Godar immediately makes it clear - he is a fatalist. It concerns the artistic language and the behavior of the characters in the frame. As Belmondo said, “Between sadness and forgetfulness, I choose forgetfulness.” Sadness is a compromise.
Imitating the Noir hits, the viewer is offered to look at Michel Poicard - a young heartthrob, car thief and just a charming criminal. Michelle, pretending to be Humphrey Bogart, with the same indifference can kill a person and ask a girl on a date.
The almost intricate storyline is filled with references, quotes and some pantomime, without having the most important thing - a strong script and thought. Yes, the scarcity of the plot, to some extent, can be justified by financial limitations, but to issue a picture only for that reason for protest is rudeness no less obvious than broken editing.
Based on the mediocrely provided fatalism, the characters of Jean Seberg and Belmondo are presented as cheap parody of the American film market, but with a deeper European content. But then a strange thing happens - not the best beginnings of the New World are taken as a basis and turn into copies of very mediocre quality. In any case, the so-called “new wave” counts from “In the last breath” and it makes no sense to wave your fists after a fight. The dialogue was good.
As a child, I hated two things most: black and white movies and the absence of pictures in books.
My childhood is over, I no longer pay attention to the presence of pictures in books. And I enjoy black and white movies more than color movies: so you see more without being distracted by irrelevant details.
The atmosphere of eroticism (it is precisely the atmosphere, and not the presence of sex scenes as such, when the attraction in the film imperceptibly covers you) is harmoniously combined with a dynamic sound series, a fast succession of views of Paris and natural dialogue between a bad guy and a young girl who recently met each other.
It is full of revolutionary techniques of cinematography and editing, which were then used hundreds of times by directors of New Hollywood (and after them all the rest), which today we no longer notice, but take for granted.
But as a simple viewer, I remember more innocent and at the same time sexy Jean Seberg and indecently young Belmondo.
Excellent pickup manual: how to do it at ease, without scaring off and at the same time not leaving the image of the bad guy.
Dialogues seem to be taken from today, when you meet a pretty smart girl somewhere in the library and she answers indecent questions sometimes intricately, sometimes decisively, but always not trivial.
Well, in general, a film about everything in the world, when you are a little over 20 and you are in a hurry to live, running away from boring everyday life.
10 out of 10
The best film of a real rebel, the progenitor of the French new wave is Jean-Luc Godard, which reflects most of the artistic techniques of this outstanding creator that have entered the history of cinema.
The story of Michel Poacard, a thief and burner of life and American Patricia Francoini, a future journalist, is a story about the life of freedom-loving youth of the early 1960s, as well as her inherent doubts and arrogance, love and recklessness. The film takes place in Paris, the city of love. Against the backdrop of the enchanting views of the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, a crime drama unfolds, as if peeped at by a talented self-taught man whose creative path was just beginning at that time. How natural and relaxed the actions of the characters of the picture, so naturally their roles are performed by the wonderful Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo. One gets the impression that young actors do not have much trouble showing the contradictory characters of their characters, which is quite possible, because they themselves are representatives of that rebellious era.
At the very beginning of the film, the phrase In addition, I am a scoundrel and before our eyes appears a young man with a hat over his face and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. His whole appearance speaks of his unscrupulous self-confidence and impudence. This is the image of the “dead man on vacation”, the causeless anarchist and lover of Michel Poacard. His first act confirms our assumptions about his “morality.” It is not difficult for such a person to go all-in, especially when you consider that he has nothing to lose at the same time, except for someone else’s stolen goods. Nevertheless, this hero is able to evoke involuntary sympathy from the viewer - he is simple, candid and he ... is in love. The object of his passion is cute aspiring journalist Patricia Frankini, who is not as simple as it seems at first glance. In her head is a fog of doubt and uncertainty. But in it, the hero is attracted by her ease, the fact that she is "funny" (" this is better than beautiful).
The author managed to convey the contradictory atmosphere of the situation - both lightness and tension. A significant role in this was played by noir music (something similar to the soundtracks for American films that combined elements of different genres) by the Algerian composer Marcial Solal.
Special attention should be paid to the work of the operator Raoul Kutar, with whom Godard subsequently developed a close cooperation - together they created 17 films. Delightful close-ups, a shaking camera while shooting scenes in the car, the looks of the actors directly into the camera, the viewer can also be noted as magical features of this film and the whole new wave in particular. Kutar managed to create a connection between the character on the screen and the viewer on the other side of the screen - isn't that the magic of cinema?
From the lips of the heroes, curious thoughts, words, reasonings about life and relationships are broken every now and then. I want to read every citation:
I have always been attracted to girls who are not made for me.
“I cannot be free if I am not happy, and if I am happy I am free.”
They are open and easy to communicate with each other and it bribes the viewer.
I can't do it without you.
- Of course you can.
I can, but I don't want to.
For this, it is undoubtedly worth paying tribute to the script work Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol.
The director also managed to express his vision of the new cinema through a ragged, jumping montage. At first glance, it seems as if these are ridiculous mistakes, but they have a certain meaning. With the help of jumps between frames, he sought to convey the movement of time. The director himself said: “Any editing is a lie”, while believing that the editing can survive even the movie.
In conclusion, just watch Godard while you are young, while you are in love and carefree. It will reveal to you the black and white world of France, which will live in your heart forever.
What would you like to achieve in life?
To become immortal and then to die.
8 out of 10
In one of his interviews, Godard said that the past does not interest him, only the present is worthy of attention. The main character of this film is not interested in the past or the future. He lives moments, stealing and killing, not thinking about the consequences and wrongness of his actions.
The question of freedom became the cornerstone of 20th-century French philosophy. This theme runs through the works of Camus, Sartre, Simon de Beauvoir. So Godard, apparently, decided to contribute to thinking about such an abstract concept. The main value of Michel is freedom. He, as we see, understands it as unencumbered by social foundations and principles, as a refusal to evaluate his actions from a moral point of view. But is he really free to sum up and say, "I'm tired." I want to sleep. Why is he tired of being so free to do what he pleases?
This is probably one of my favorite final scenes. Michelle, running such a long way, realizing there's nowhere to run. Keeping a cigarette in your mouth, by the way, is a kind of loyalty to habit. And in his last breath he is "fait la tete." To the absurdity of life, to your lover or to yourself? Or maybe all of it at once. And Patricia, as it captures the memory of Michel touching lips, thereby repeating his signature gesture. And once again we hear her request to explain the meaning of the word, only this time she breaks the fourth wall and addresses the viewer.
The main characters of the picture are beautiful. Jean-Paul Belmondo, so able to be rude, cynical, mocking and playful, all without causing disgust in the audience. I admit, I even felt a great sympathy for the hero. He has so much charm and self-confidence that all the girls are crazy about him, and his main love closes his eyes to everything that is “unaccepted” to tell a girl if you are looking for her reciprocity. I think he was born with a hat and a cigarette, so harmonious with these attributes.
In contrast, Patricia is represented. Unlike Michelle, she's not sure. She is constantly searching, thinking and doubting. Well, in general, such a lady, because of which men then globalize the entire female family and say, "These women do not know what they want, you will not understand them." However, her boyish haircut and sweet accent make her so charming.
The very long scene at Patricia's house so skillfully reveals the characters. Their dialogue jumps randomly from topic to topic, they talk about nothing and everything. This is where Michelle learns that he is wanted by the police. But this does not change his intention to “sleep with Patricia, because she is beautiful” and his insistence on their trip to Rome.
There's no happy ending. They're not looking for him. The hero is not only opposed to society, but absolutely does not want to reconcile with it. Well, it's just "Stranger" Camus, for God's sake. Interestingly, Godard does not condemn the actions of the main character. More to say, it seems to me that almost all significant films of the “New Wave” there is a cult of antisociality.
By the way, after watching, I immediately began to write a review, and included the film in order to review one point. He got me so caught up that I watched the tape again. An hour after watching. This has never happened to me before. I think I’ll watch this movie again. For, for all its apparent simplicity, it is very difficult.
Watching "In the Last Breath" from the first minutes, you wonder, "Is there really going to be something unusual here?" Still, the fact that the Frenchman Godard partially adopted the style of Hollywood cinema, can not be denied. However, this is only a superficial sensation, but about everything in order.
The film was shot in 1960 during the heyday of the so-called new wave of French cinema, which implies, first of all, sufficient non-triviality of the plot with unexpected twists and turns. The beginning focuses on Michel Poincar, a brazen and charismatic burner of life, played by actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. Among the outsiders, it is believed that Michelle mows under the great American actor Humphrey Bogart, and in the film there is a tiny reference to him. That is why, apparently, the main character is such a brazen and charismatic, plagiaristic image of Bogart in life. The second central character of the film is Patricia Frankini, a student of the Sorbonne who works as a newspaper handout. Unlike Poincar, she is less determined and more refined, she doesn’t need the flaming and dangerous adventures that her friend, a carjacker, lives with. They are dedicated to the picture, their relationship against the background of the criminality of the young man.
It doesn’t make much sense to say that the film begins with the murder of a police officer by Michel. This is probably just to start the process. In general, this crime does not change the essence of things, Michelle was and remains a free wanderer-romantic: either come to one of the girlfriends to borrow money, then go to knock out debts, then meet Patricia and offer her to abandon everything and go to Italy. For him, this is the order of things, and it seems spontaneous.
Perhaps the relationship of these two is also an accident. Whether they were in love is even more controversial. Poincar constantly confesses to the girl in love, and she is never sure of anything. I think there was love, but there was no place for it in this story. Even if they both want a free and wild life, even if no police officer had been killed, getting along with such a couple would not be easy. There are several explanations for this. The first is dialogue. In the film, there are countless of them, and each reveals the soul of young people almost completely. The most memorable of his quotes (and duration) occurred in the hotel room of Patricia. This is where the focus is on words. Although it is interesting to listen to them, you doubt the adequacy of all things. They can't both talk to each other. For example, while Patricia praises the great American writer William Faulkner, Michelle tries to get under her skirt and to questions like “How do you feel about such and such a work?”, he replies “I want to caress you.” The hot Poincar could have left her at any moment and left to have fun with another. And so much not because of the timidity of the heroine, but because of her hypocritical stupidity. Despite her reading, she constantly asks Michel the meaning of not the most sophisticated words. Of course, the image of a stupid blonde did not appear from such heroines in culture, but it did not disappear for sure, and then her admiration for Faulkner, a modernist writer, was questionable. This genre requires a lot of strength to read. Secondly, Patricia is still very hesitant, which leads to a dramatic component of the picture. He does not need a girl who does not correspond to his opinion that cowardice is the main human vice. Here the very fate seems to protect them both, but because of youth and smoke in the head, both do not go anywhere and only interfere with each other. Not all love ends in happiness.
The plot, but not less attention deserves technical work on the film. The film clearly demonstrates a new wave in French cinema, but how! In a number of considerations, either new or selected styles were demonstrated, which determined the formation of the film art movement for the next ten years, on which Francois Truffaut, the same Jean-Luc Godard, and a couple of other directors will rely in the future. “On the Last Breath” takes a lot from Hollywood: from well-to-do properties to trifles. The film resembles something from noir, but there is a catch, and very significant. Perhaps for the first time the alleged detective is told on behalf of the criminal, and the investigators here are only extras. But the transmission of light play and darkness does not negate the style of the picture, which fits this word "noir" (French, by the way). Also scattered throughout the picture are elements of the genre that were present in each picture: jazz music, and such trifles as the clothes of the heroes, periodically appearing in striped shirts and dresses - still shown in the Maltese Falcon symbol, meaning prison, a bar, which both deserve. Rarely have so many Hollywood options met in Europe.
However, it is still more in the plot part, which is very few equals. It is truly unique and stylish, proving that the French and cinema make fashionable. No one dared to remove relationships like this, to show people like this. The image of Michel Poincar crossed out any image of Humphrey Bogart, became an icon. And Belmondo brilliantly did his arduous job of embodying a dirty romantic who's too good to die, and the ending puzzles us because the story could have turned towards Poincar, could have. That's where the peak ace is thrown out of Godard's deck, which made the picture a cult for the whole cinema. Everyone can continue the story at their own discretion, because there is no clear ending in the picture. And there is almost no equal to this film. Its value is indeed very high, so a modest 7.9 on both MoviePoisk and IMDB seems unfair.
Perhaps there is something elusively and inexorably French about this pragmatist-less but impulsively impulsive life principle of being a revolutionary. And at times it does not matter in what external or internal sphere of life this revolutionary fervor is directed, this rebellion against the original rules and norms, whether it is literature, politics or cinema. With the latter, French cultural figures have a special relationship at all, for without the memorable “Arrival of the Train” of the Lumiere brothers, the history of world cinema would not begin in France, which became its cradle. In the postwar period, since the fifties, cinema in general, and not only the French, decided to reinvent the "young rebels", inspired by the ideology of rebelliousness without the cause of the American spill, those who created the so-called New Wave - Truffaut, Chabrol, Godard, René, Rob-Grier, and it was possible with absolute certainty to speak of the existence of two camps of film-conformist formalists, which in creative terms were both similar and dissimilar, but the common goal that the conditional of the first camp (Gebrol), and the second - that only one of the cinema, and the invention (Greneo-Gene). And one of the milestone years of the New Wave was 1960, the year of Godrov’s debut with the painting “On the Last Breath.”
Godard begins his picture suddenly, without unnecessary prefaces, immediately letting the viewer into the inner world of Michel Pouaccard, whose whole life is in essence its eternal flight from reality and the constant pursuit of the shadows of his unspoken past. However, is there a reality as such in the movie universe? In many ways, it is constructed from paradoxes, when the deliberately careless, close to documentary, manner of shooting, lack of a clear plot, improvisational style of acting in the frame are superimposed in such a successfully recreated “our” reality characters, this reality of life is not quite reflective, such total author’s metaphors, living ideas and no more than in a general postmodern exposition. Only 8 years later, during the memorable student speeches, Paris will literally be flooded with such Michel Pouaccars, who read Marx and Cohn-Bendit and thirst for change with ineradicable maximalism. But before that, they had only matured, drunk to the drunkenness of new ideas of new cinema and Poucard became not so much a reflection of an era of great changes, but a mirror in which everyone saw or tried to see himself.
Not too bad. After exactly 55 years, Godard will direct Farewell to Speech, no less a bold cinematic manifesto than In Last Breath. It seems that between these pictures the abyss is primarily ideological - rebellion is opposed to self-digging, and the total chaos of film language has been replaced by a skillful and artificial formalism, even characters other at first glance. But that Michelle, that Gideon is equal, the former resists society with its dictatorship of eternal rules and behavioral attitudes, and the latter resists love in which he sees no meaning. Godard seems to close the circle of his own philosophy, having come to the same doomed rebellious attitudes that dominated his early and best work.
But what is the character of the hero? Poiccard is actually the hero of a heroless time, a time when new heroes have not yet been born, but the old ones have already passed away; he is intermediate and purely self-defining in his semi-mythical state of rebellious consciousness. He is not even a hero, as an Antihero in the broadest and purely literary sense, existing in the space of pure as a sheet of new cinema. It is noteworthy that such an Antihero is simply impossible in the so-called “new novel” by Rob-Griller, Sarota and Butor; Godard quietly enters into controversy with this trio, offering, in addition to the usual existential longing for them, also a hopeless feeling of total denial by Michel Pouaccard of everything. Nihil verum est licet omnia - this is the life principle of Michel, wearing the mask of the hero of American noir, imitating Bogart, but in fact not in all close even to James Dean. This very nihil is the chief state of mind in which Godard's hero resides - a reflection not of the director, but of the coming era of timelessness, when all coordinates will be lost in the chaos of revolutionary ferment. There is not and will not be any unbearable lightness of being, but only its no less unbearable heaviness, that atmospheric pillar that strangles and prevents you from living, breathing fully. Therefore, Pouaccart seems even a timeless character, who was born only to die, for the meaning of life escapes from him, and love does not seem to be the only salvation from all troubles, especially since his beloved is from the same category of undecided, overly impulsive natures, for whom only this moment of life is important; there is no habit of looking at the prospect, since this very perspective also does not yet exist.
Any sociopolitical vertical in Godard’s picture is not guessed even on the periphery of the ragged narrative. Somewhere, but not within the framework of the artistic space of the film, there is a social ferment, a sharp discontent with the state of affairs that has developed in the Fourth Republic, and now mass discontent, even incredible fury, will spill boiling water of total defiance on the Paris streets, but these moods in the film Godard is not. Nor is he in Michel with his spirit of contradiction and fatigue from life. It seems at times that he himself sought to complete his life marathon as quickly as possible, much later called by our director Danelia “autumn”. And despite the obvious summer heat on the streets of Paris in the film Godard, there is a clear feeling that in the soul of Michel Poaccard has long come such an autumn, exhausting spleen, which leads the hero to two options for resolving his universal fatigue – or an unauthorized muzzle in his mouth or a gun at his temple, but on the part of those to whom he owes. At the same time, Godard as an exceptional demiurge decides for the audience, choosing the controversial second option. Controversial due to its obvious plot unravelling of the main dramaturgical knot - Poiccard is deprived of even a hint of choice, to win his own right to die. Rebellion for no reason ends in death, the reason of which is only that Michel Poaccard could not truly find himself and ultimately save himself. He always wanted to be against, not for, because he didn’t see ideals, and they were dead. His conflict with society and with himself could not be resolved by subsequent routine, routine, life as such, and family comfort seemed something archaic, outdated, unnecessary, feigned. And having cut himself out of life, he made noble his own death, which was flight, frantic running, the breath of freedom, which is always scarce and more than ever.
“These directors created a whole universe—with special rituals, gestures, words, poses, manners—and it was the same universe that audiences lived in day after day.”
The film “On the Last Breath” became the first “swallow” in the series of films by the French director J.-L. Godard. The movie should have made itself known immediately. And it happened. The picture had the effect of an exploded bomb. The bomb here refers to all the tension accumulated in the cinema, the period of the so-called "daddy" cinema.
Godard originally wanted to make a film noir. But he did not, as he himself admitted, succeed. Unwittingly, however, the director made a “revolution” in cinema. Unusual for that time, the form of editing allowed to create the effect of feverishly changing plot: scenes that may seem important are ruthlessly cut, and attention is mainly focused on words and gestures expressing the love of the main characters.
There are a number of different problems in the film. One of them is the problem of rebelliousness, the denial of established rules of behavior. The main character is Michel Poiscar (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a rebel. It rejects all social norms. Even in American film noir, heroes do not achieve this level of disrespect for society. Already in the very first frame, Michelle Poiscar challenges society - he brazenly smokes a cigarette directly into the frame (in general, throughout the picture the hero constantly smokes). His hero – Humphrey Bogart (this can be seen from the scene where the hero looks at his portrait) – is one of the leading actors of American film noir. Perhaps out of a desire to imitate his hero, Poiscar achieves such antisocial status.
Another problem of the film is the problem of youth. This issue occupied and occupies all artists, and representatives of the New Wave are no exception, if only because the movement itself consisted of young people. They were talking about what worries them right now. Here Godard touches on the main problems of a young man: money (or lack thereof), study, the search for happiness, independence, love and sex.
And another topic, one of the central and most obvious in the picture, in my opinion, is the problem of man-woman relations. This theme runs through all the films of the 50-60s in France.
Rebel and criminal Michelle Poiscar falls in love with 'diligent student' Patricia Frankini (Jean Seberg) But to fall in love is to love. Patricia is trying to figure out whether she loves Michel or not. They play. Everyone has their own game, but their games are intertwined. Michelle plays a bandit and a rebel: he steals cars, steals money and even kills a person. But the viewer doesn't see it as a crime, no. It just seems like a game. Perhaps the imagination of the main characters. Patricia's "game" is a "game" of an independent girl: "I wish you loved me, and then, I don't know ..." And at the same time, I don’t want to, I’m very independent. Yes, she may be independent, but she loves Michel. But in order to prove the opposite (let’s not forget about the “game”), she gives it to the police. This “play” of a man and a woman has tragic consequences. However, in the final scene, it becomes clear that both he, Michelle, and she, Patricia, loved each other. He died playfully. She accepted his death "playfully."
All of these problems of the film "In the Last Breath" certainly can not exist separately from each other. Each of them causes the other. So the problem of "man-woman" is a consequence of the problem of youth, etc.
But all this together gives us, the audience, a stunning picture of everyday life in France in the 50s and 60s.
Michel Poiscar (Jean-Paul Belmondo) makes a living stealing expensive cars. He walks through life without thinking about tomorrow. Expensive cigars, sunglasses and costumes circle the heads of women, and Poiscar does not refuse the attention of the beautiful half of humanity. Among the hobbies, a special place is occupied by relations with the American Patricia (Jean Seaberg), to which the main character is irresistibly drawn.
Everything changes in a moment. A stupid act that led to a fatal shot at a police officer leads to the tightening of the knot on Michel's neck. Now he is a dangerous criminal, declared wanted, and he is followed by detectives. And where in such a difficult situation will the relationship with Patricia begin? What will this link lead to?
Jean-Luc Godard perfectly conveyed the spirit and color of Paris of the sixties. A time when young people in the whirlpool of free relationships can not yet find solid ground under their feet. In the club of cigarette smoke, walking past the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower, more and more often there are thoughts about the role of this or that person in your fate. What role does he play? How long will he be with me? So what's next? Is there a future together?
Jean-Luc Godard answered all the questions in this film.
It is especially worth noting the dialogues that are worthy of a literary work, and the well-developed actor duet chemistry between the characters undoubtedly received a vivid expression.
7 out of 10
We said, I am about myself and you are about you; you should talk about me and I should talk about you.
After watching this movie, you wonder, “Was there love?” but as the title of my review suggests, love didn’t happen.
Throughout the picture, we see the opposition of the characters - a man and a woman, a Frenchman and an American, a "simple guy" and an educated girl, a burner of life and an insensitive follower of the laws of survival by least resistance. In this struggle, the hero of Belmondo wins, he feels life, and this helps him to reject the framework of prudish morality, to fully feel the taste for life and, having had enough, to make a face of the unloved, close his eyes to himself. The fact that in the final scene, the main character closes his eyes symbolically demonstrates that he cornered himself, his “walking on the razor blade” could last much longer, but he was tired, exhausted, it was time to stop this race.
My thoughts are confused, and, of course, do not reflect the full value of the picture, I wrote only about what disturbed me, what thoughts arose during the viewing. Of course, it would be worth talking about the absolutely stunning manner in which the film was made, about the innovations of editing, etc., but other people did it better than me, so I will not repeat myself, I will only say that the way this film was made deserves special attention and, perhaps, a separate film.
Perhaps there is something elusively and inexorably French about this pragmatist-less but impulsively impulsive life principle of being a revolutionary. And at times it does not matter in what external or internal sphere of life this revolutionary fervor is directed, this rebellion against the original rules and norms, whether it is literature, politics or cinema. With the latter, French cultural figures have a special relationship at all, for without the memorable “Arrival of the Train” of the Lumiere brothers, the history of world cinema would not begin in France, which became its cradle. In the postwar period, since the fifties, cinema in general, and not only the French, decided to reinvent the "young rebels", inspired by the ideology of rebelliousness without the cause of the American spill, those who created the so-called New Wave - Truffaut, Chabrol, Godard, René, Rob-Grier, and it was possible with absolute certainty to speak of the existence of two camps of film-conformist formalists, which in creative terms were both similar and dissimilar, but the common goal that the conditional of the first camp (Gebrol), and the second - that only one of the cinema, and the invention (Greneo-Gene). And one of the milestone years of the New Wave was 1960, the year of Godrov’s debut with the painting “On the Last Breath.”
Godard begins his picture suddenly, without unnecessary prefaces, immediately letting the viewer into the inner world of Michel Pouaccard, whose whole life is in essence its eternal flight from reality and the constant pursuit of the shadows of his unspoken past. However, is there a reality as such in the movie universe? In many ways, it is constructed from paradoxes, when the deliberately careless, close to documentary, manner of shooting, lack of a clear plot, improvisational style of acting in the frame are superimposed in such a successfully recreated “our” reality characters, this reality of life is not quite reflective, such total author’s metaphors, living ideas and no more than in a general postmodern exposition. Only 8 years later, during the memorable student speeches, Paris will literally be flooded with such Michel Pouaccars, who read Marx and Cohn-Bendit and thirst for change with ineradicable maximalism. But before that, they had only matured, drunk to the drunkenness of new ideas of new cinema and Poucard became not so much a reflection of an era of great changes, but a mirror in which everyone saw or tried to see himself.
Not too bad. After exactly 55 years, Godard will direct Farewell to Speech, no less a bold cinematic manifesto than In Last Breath. It seems that between these pictures the abyss is primarily ideological - rebellion is opposed to self-digging, and the total chaos of film language has been replaced by a skillful and artificial formalism, even characters other at first glance. But that Michelle, that Gideon is equal, the former resists society with its dictatorship of eternal rules and behavioral attitudes, and the latter resists love in which he sees no meaning. Godard seems to close the circle of his own philosophy, having come to the same doomed rebellious attitudes that dominated his early and best work.
But what is the character of the hero? Poiccard is actually the hero of a heroless time, a time when new heroes have not yet been born, but the old ones have already passed away; he is intermediate and purely self-defining in his semi-mythical state of rebellious consciousness. He is not even a hero, as an Antihero in the broadest and purely literary sense, existing in the space of pure as a sheet of new cinema. It is noteworthy that such an Antihero is simply impossible in the so-called “new novel” by Rob-Griller, Sarota and Butor; Godard quietly enters into controversy with this trio, offering, in addition to the usual existential longing for them, also a hopeless feeling of total denial by Michel Pouaccard of everything. Nihil verum est licet omnia - this is the life principle of Michel, wearing the mask of the hero of American noir, imitating Bogart, but in fact not in all close even to James Dean. This very nihil is the chief state of mind in which Godard's hero resides - a reflection not of the director, but of the coming era of timelessness, when all coordinates will be lost in the chaos of revolutionary ferment. There is not and will not be any unbearable lightness of being, but only its no less unbearable heaviness, that atmospheric pillar that strangles and prevents you from living, breathing fully. Therefore, Pouaccard seems even a timeless character who was born only to die, for the meaning of life escapes from him, and love does not seem to be the only salvation from all troubles, especially since his beloved is from the same category of undecided, overly impulsive natures, for whom only this moment of life is important; there is no habit of looking at the prospect, since this very prospect is also not yet.
Any sociopolitical vertical in Godard’s picture is not guessed even on the periphery of the ragged narrative. Somewhere, but not within the framework of the artistic space of the film, there is a social ferment, a sharp discontent with the state of affairs that has developed in the Fourth Republic, and now mass discontent, even incredible fury, will spill boiling water of total defiance on the Paris streets, but these moods in the film Godard is not. Nor is he in Michel with his spirit of contradiction and fatigue from life. It seems at times that he himself sought to complete his life marathon as quickly as possible, much later called by our director Danelia “autumn”. And despite the obvious summer heat on the streets of Paris in the film Godard, there is a clear feeling that in the soul of Michel Poaccard has long come such an autumn, exhausting spleen, which leads the hero to two options for resolving his universal fatigue – or an unauthorized muzzle in his mouth or a gun at his temple, but on the part of those to whom he owes. At the same time, Godard as an exceptional demiurge decides for the audience, choosing the controversial second option. Controversial due to its obvious plot unravelling of the main dramaturgical knot - Poiccard is deprived of even a hint of choice, to win his own right to die. Rebellion for no reason ends in death, the reason of which is only that Michel Poaccard could not truly find himself and ultimately save himself. He always wanted to be against, not for, because he didn’t see ideals, and they were dead. His conflict with society and with himself could not be resolved by subsequent routine, routine, life as such, and family comfort seemed something archaic, outdated, unnecessary, feigned. And having cut himself out of life, he made noble his own death, which was flight, frantic running, the breath of freedom, which is always scarce and more than ever.
I don’t know how big Jean-Luc Godard is or how big he was made, but so far for me personally, seeing three of his paintings, the score is two-one is not in favor of the Frenchman. One of the things I liked was the short film Charlotte and her Jules. She's the only one yet. "Contempt" with Brigitte Bardot did not particularly affect the strings of the heart and soul. As an arbitrator, he decided to watch “In the Last Breath”, especially since he had not watched pictures with Belmondo for a long time. What can I say? Alas, I didn't get it. I'm sorry.
So here's one person. Is it a person? Everyone's gonna say yes. I agree. Michel Poicard has a character, it can not take away. Well, how else is it when you lead a life like this, when you and Michelle Poiscar and then Laszlo Kovacs, and the highway robber and seducer of girls. The wheel is spinning, our Michelle is in Paris, and he's no good killing a cop. No remorse, I went on the road until I met the newspaperwoman Patricia. She was cut like a boy, and what he found in her, you can remember the words from the song of Alla Pugacheva. Always only one desire to sleep with a baby, although before that they already had “it”. All right, let's keep driving.
I need to call Antonio Berutti, who owes me a favor. Call. Let's keep going until we hit little Patricia again. In the intervals between moving along the highway, heart-to-heart conversations. With whom? With little Patricia. That's the whole movie. Jean Seberg isn't so bad as Patricia, but why is she? "" If we had Godard as Anita Ekberg, the effect would have been much more significant. And yet, back to the main character, Belmondo. He didn't seem like a young man to me. There are bandits, so there are bandits. There are sinners, so sinners. And this is exactly what a fireman, without a king in his head.
A reservation must be made here. In the film, of course, it is clear that Michelle Poiscar is tired. He was tired and tired, he was bored. I'd go to the factory, but I'd get married, bored as if with my hand. Either he is alive or he is not dead yet.
Jean Seberg's character is also colorless. She's sleeping with her boss, sleeping with Michel, and she doesn't know what she wants. It's like being a hero. And how these two mutually tired and phlegmatic people attracted to each other, only God knows. No, no matter what you say, it blows from this film what aimlessness coupled with cunning. You don't believe in this vagabond or this newspaper girl, which means you don't believe the director. And again, for the millionth time, the question is, for whom? I don’t know, maybe I’m deeply wrong and I should look at other works of Godard, but in the meantime, in thought.
5 out of 10
To discuss Godard is more interesting than to watch.
Regarding Godard's films, one critic aptly said they were more interesting to discuss than to watch. I totally agree with that. “In the Last Breath” is a cult film, and at the same time one of the simplest in Godard. But even that, it's pretty hard to watch. I watched what was happening on screen with interest, but more as a historical cinematic document than a live thrilling film. The action unfolding in the film did not touch the soul strings. But, must be, this is what Godard wanted, because he developed in the film Brecht’s concept of alienation of the viewer from what is happening on the screen. Anyway, in the 60s, when the young Belmondo appeared in the role of rebel, bully and criminal Michel, the film became extremely popular among young people. While watching, I thought maybe I was watching it at the time, I would have seen it in a completely different light. After all, like all Godard’s films, “In the Last Breath” is replete with open and hidden quotes from films, books, articles widely discussed at the time. Everything that was happening was clear then. And it was perceived as life itself, splashed out on the screen.
Young people watched Godard, and other New Wave directors, soaking up the protest against "Daddy's Movie" and the "gray, dull consumer society." A little later, in 1968, these sentiments resulted in the student revolution in May. In this aspect Godard is compared to Voltaire. The Enlightenment prepared the Great French Revolution. The new wave is the revolution of 1968.
Michelle is an irrational rebel. He does not accept the boring monotony of the gray world, and chooses the role of a criminal living life to the fullest, not going to any compromises. Between "sad humility and death," he consciously chooses death. His girlfriend rushes and can not decide whether to surrender to her whirlwind of love and adventure, or choose the path of decency. She is cowardly at the decisive moment, betrays her beloved, but even after that she can not decide why she actually did it. And she did it for a very simple reason: fear of society, the inability to transcend its morals and prejudices. The hero of Belmondo is capable of this and directly says that cowardice is the most vile thing there is. To the end, he follows the chosen path, and becomes an idol of the youth of the 60s.