As one of the most famous entries brought forward by French cinema's so called 'New Wave', Breathless has been met with critical acclaim by critics and is ranked #13 of all time in a 2012 Sight & Sound poll. Of course, all of these awards and statusses mean very little, and it is quite obvious that everyone involved in making it have this 'iconic' status is biased and affected by the simple notion of 'uniqueness' in cinema, or are suffering from a plain form of pseudo intellectuality.
To properly place a verdict on this film, one has to take into consideration some of director Jean Luc Godard's visions on cinema. Being a communist, he despised the traditional forms of cinema, and preferred innovation and change above craft and expertise. What this really means, of course, is simply that Godard is a really poor director who was unable to tell conventional stories in a succesful fashion. Breathless is an experiment, and nothing more. It is a film suffering from an incoherent plot ( If there is one ), horrible editing, mediocre sound & horrendous dialogue. The only impressive factor in this 'experiment' are some well choreographed long takes, featuring many changes of directions and requiring a lot of precise timing. However, this is all undone by the terrible jump cut technique Godard implemented here. Apparently, this was caused by Godard being forced to cut a lot of footage, which resulted in a lot of jump cuts being used so he could shorten them out while still using parts of the footage, making sure the audience is even more alienated to whatever is happening on screen.
There is no plot in Breathless. A man starts driving in his car and starts mumbling some of the most random dialogue imaginable during this drive. It also features a horrible fourth wall break, and leads to him getting pulled over by a cop and subsequently killing this cop for no apparent reason. This leads to our main character running away and spending the rest of the film with his American girlfriend while seemingly not caring a bit about whether he gets caught or not. This continues throughout the film, as neither him or his girlfriend show a little bit of emotional importance to their situation, leaving the viewer with little reason to care about what happens to both of them. Of course, our main character is also unsympathetic, moronic, childish and just plain unlikeable. The 'romance' between both main characters has zero charisma whatsoever, and these people simply do not behave as real people. A lot of the dialogue was improvised, and it seems that these two were not very good at that, as nearly all dialogue is either out of place, devoid of intelligence, or pretentious.
So, apart from the fact that there's nothing to like about Breathless, it's obvious technical and creative shortcomings such as a lack of narrative structure or fleshed out characters also make sure there's nearly nothing to appreciate about it either. To put it plainly; Breathless is a mess. It has been overhyped horrendously by pretentious self proclaimed 'cinephiles' because it favors a 'changing of the guards' and because they think it makes them look smart. This is why defenders of this film can generally only counterargument skeptics with the lowly argument of 'You didn't get it' or 'You're too dumb'. The truth is, there is nothing to understand about Breathless. It does not have depth, it does not have intellect. The sole reason for its acclaim is based on the fact that it dared to break a lot of unwritten rules of conventional cinema, and this is something that in no way relates to it actually having some quality.
Breathless has terrible improvised dialogue, horrendous editing in the form of jump cutting, mediocre acting, no story, no character development, no cinematic drama or emotional power and is in the end a poorly executed experiment instead of a film, and truly exposes Godard for the mediocrity that he is.
To properly place a verdict on this film, one has to take into consideration some of director Jean Luc Godard's visions on cinema. Being a communist, he despised the traditional forms of cinema, and preferred innovation and change above craft and expertise. What this really means, of course, is simply that Godard is a really poor director who was unable to tell conventional stories in a succesful fashion. Breathless is an experiment, and nothing more. It is a film suffering from an incoherent plot ( If there is one ), horrible editing, mediocre sound & horrendous dialogue. The only impressive factor in this 'experiment' are some well choreographed long takes, featuring many changes of directions and requiring a lot of precise timing. However, this is all undone by the terrible jump cut technique Godard implemented here. Apparently, this was caused by Godard being forced to cut a lot of footage, which resulted in a lot of jump cuts being used so he could shorten them out while still using parts of the footage, making sure the audience is even more alienated to whatever is happening on screen.
There is no plot in Breathless. A man starts driving in his car and starts mumbling some of the most random dialogue imaginable during this drive. It also features a horrible fourth wall break, and leads to him getting pulled over by a cop and subsequently killing this cop for no apparent reason. This leads to our main character running away and spending the rest of the film with his American girlfriend while seemingly not caring a bit about whether he gets caught or not. This continues throughout the film, as neither him or his girlfriend show a little bit of emotional importance to their situation, leaving the viewer with little reason to care about what happens to both of them. Of course, our main character is also unsympathetic, moronic, childish and just plain unlikeable. The 'romance' between both main characters has zero charisma whatsoever, and these people simply do not behave as real people. A lot of the dialogue was improvised, and it seems that these two were not very good at that, as nearly all dialogue is either out of place, devoid of intelligence, or pretentious.
So, apart from the fact that there's nothing to like about Breathless, it's obvious technical and creative shortcomings such as a lack of narrative structure or fleshed out characters also make sure there's nearly nothing to appreciate about it either. To put it plainly; Breathless is a mess. It has been overhyped horrendously by pretentious self proclaimed 'cinephiles' because it favors a 'changing of the guards' and because they think it makes them look smart. This is why defenders of this film can generally only counterargument skeptics with the lowly argument of 'You didn't get it' or 'You're too dumb'. The truth is, there is nothing to understand about Breathless. It does not have depth, it does not have intellect. The sole reason for its acclaim is based on the fact that it dared to break a lot of unwritten rules of conventional cinema, and this is something that in no way relates to it actually having some quality.
Breathless has terrible improvised dialogue, horrendous editing in the form of jump cutting, mediocre acting, no story, no character development, no cinematic drama or emotional power and is in the end a poorly executed experiment instead of a film, and truly exposes Godard for the mediocrity that he is.