Next Saturday night I'm going to see Godard's Breathless at the Starz Film Center in downtown Denver. I was too young to see it when it first came out. Saw the remake with Richard Gere and liked it, so I'm prepared to love Godard's original version. Godard, along with Truffault, was a leader of the bad boys of French Cinema who started a movement borrowing extensively from documentaries.
Now, Front, you know you might be dating yourself by suggesting your age range at the time of the release of the first
Breathless--anyone can look up its date on the IMDb, you know!
Godard's film is certainly important and impressive in many ways. It's a key work of the French Nouvelle Vague and of world cinema generally. It's not my personal favorite from the films I have seen by that director--I prefer
Contempt and
Pierrot le fou.
Did you know that Godard made a followup film, in the very loosest sense of the term, in 1975? It's called
Numero deux, which he shot on video and transferred to film stock. He was hired or commissioned to do a sequel or remake to
Breathless, and in his idiosyncratic manner, ended up making something that had very little to do with the original film other than alluding to it in the title. I haven't seen this one myself, incidentally.
I have read that Godard was much influenced by a Soviet Russian director named Boris Barnet. His early short
Charlotte et son jules is supposedly a direct hommage to Barnet, and Godard's early work is said to be not properly understood without knowledge of Barnet's style and sensibility. Unfortunately, his films are rarely exhibited outside of major cinephile capitals like Paris, though the director's 1933 feature
Okraina was recently released on DVD.
Cheers,
Scott