126
PARTISAN REVIEW
siglli f:ca nt thcmes. Clearl y, Ihe hero of
Breathless
is a di saf ected punk
who brea ks the law (who kill s) as a n embl em o f hi s freeelom. Yet we
('xpcr ien ce him in the context o f the film as a vita l fo rce, a man
in\'cntin g hi s life moment by moment as if he were improv izing a
mo\' ie. The key to Mi ch el's surviva l is hi s un equivoca l self-interes t–
integr ity is sanity in Godard 's wor ld-hi s seem ing ly pa tho logica l cool.
Love, as the convention goes, undoes him . He moves in with an
Alll cri n ll1 g irl (Grade
n, r
am tFmpted to add ), th e schizzy Pa tricia
Franchini (J ean Seberg). who se ll s
H erald T ribunes
o n the Champs
El ysiTs a nd aspires to be a repo rter. Pa tri cia is th e self-dece ived
Amer ica n bitch-goddess manqueI'. It is th e manquce tha t redeems her
for u s. When she seems mos t in love with Mi chel she betrays him
LO
the
po li ce, a way, sh e reports. of tes ting whether she loves him o r not,
a ltho ugh mo re likely it is a repudia ti on of the dema nds o f love.
Mi chel's dea th is circumstantia l or o ffers u s tha t appea ra nce. He is tired
o f runnin g, Mi chel says wh en Pa tr icia tell s him tha t the po lice are
comin g. A fri end comes by a nd offers Michel a gun, whi ch he refu ses.
Nevertl1f'l ess, as ch an ce has it (or is it tha t character is fa te?), h e is shot
down, running away , ca rrying the very gun h e refu sed . Pa tricia's
betraya l, w ithin the film 's bo rrowed conventi o n s. is the killing blow.
It
is a lso a fuifillment of cha racter, a n act o f integrity: a kill er kill s; a bitch
betrays. After hi s dea th , in the las t sho t o f the film , Pa tri cia imita tes
Mi chel' s ritua l ges ture, rubbing the side o f her thumb across her li ps,
an act o f identifica ti on. Mi chel is dead ; the rebelli o us spirit survives .
Earli er in the film , Patricia reads the las t line o f Faulkn er 's
The
Wild Palms
to Michel, " Between g rief a nd no thing I will ta ke gri ef. "
Mi chel is unimpressed . " Gri ef 's a was te o f time," he says. " J'd choose
nothin g . Gri ef's onl y a compromi se. And you h ave to ha ve a ll or
no thin g ." (There a re texts in a ll of Godard 's films, litera ry fragments
tha t co-exi st with the visua l, tha t pa ra ll el a nd illumin a te the action
a nd sometimes merely decora te it. ) Thro ug hout
Breathless,
Mi chel
secms to speak as much fo r Goda rd as for himself. T he ch arac ter (the
icon o f Belmondo pl ay in g him ) embodi es the libera ting spirit o f the
film . Goda rd as criti c depl o red the impersona lity of the well-made
French film (wh a t Truffaut ca ll ed "The Tradi tion of Qua lity," the
Masterpiece Th eatre
of its day), choos ing a fter a po int
to
refu se
d iscuss ion o f it a ltogether.
Breathless
is an exten sion o f Goda rd 's
criticism , a vision of uncompromi sing persona l cinema, a demon stra–
ti on o f wha t is possibl e when a radi ca l idea is ca rri ed th rough to its
conclusio n .
T here are certa in unexpected pl easures in
Breathless
tha t are not
