No. 38: Breathless
by Matt Scalici on Jul.13, 2010, under Back to the Movies
Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.
While reading through some of the 1983 reviews for Jim McBride’s Breathless, I was reassured to find that most critics at the time were just as baffled by what they saw as I am watching it today in 2010. Just stating the premise of the film is flabbergasting enough: it’s an American remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic of the same name (well, technically Godard’s film is called A bout de souffle but it’s well known to American film buffs as Breathless). The classic French film is credited as one of the first pieces of true New Wave cinema and was notable because…well, it wasn’t really about anything.
That’s certainly oversimplifying things but in general, what made Breathless so revolutionary at the time was that unlike the vast majority of Hollywood studio films up to that point, it refused to adhere to typical conventions like using dialog to advance the plot and having clear protagonists and villains. It was also unconventional from a technical standpoint, with virtually no artificial lighting, handheld camerawork and improvised dialog. These were all things that changed the way people thought about film and its affects can be seen even in mainstream Hollywood studio films today.
But that’s the 1960 film. We’re here to talk about the 1983 film. A little research around the old internet will tell you that director Jim McBride considered Godard’s original film to be hugely inspirational to him as a young filmmaker and as a tribute to that classic, McBride wanted to create something that could recapture the experience he had watching the original film.
The inherent problem with trying to recapture the feeling you had when you saw something that reinvented filmmaking is that in order to truly recapture that feeling, you yourself would have to reinvent filmmaking. Half-Hearted Spoiler Alert: this film didn’t do that. Nor was McBride really trying to do that.
What he was really trying to do was to translate the characters and their relationship not only from French to English (and Paris to L.A.) but also from 1960 to 1983. I’d be wrong if I said they didn’t get anything right in this translation but there are a few really notable things that simply got lost in the translation.
In the original film, the male lead Michel is a street tough who models his personality after the coolest guy he can think of, Humphrey Bogart. His American equivalent Jesse (Richard Gere) is also a young ruffian only this time his role model is Jerry Lee Lewis. Here’s the problem with that swap: Jerry Lee Lewis is not a good stand-in for Humphrey Bogart. Anyone looks cool acting like Bogey. Most people look like idiots when they act like Jerry Lee Lewis. Maybe not all people, but Richard Gere sure as heck does.
His bizarre outbursts of dancing and rockabilly wailing are so off-putting, uncool and out of place that it makes it impossible for me as a viewer to root for this guy or even to enjoy watching him do anything. He’s unlikable in a way that makes him hard to watch.
Unfortunately, his female cohort, while easy on the eyes, is not much easier to watch in terms of her performance. French actress Valerie Kaprisky was plucked from obscurity to play Monica, Jesse’s love interest in the film (Michel’s love interest in the original film was an American girl, get it?). While her character is meant to be a brilliant young architect with a bright future ahead of her, Kaprisky looks like a newborn baby deer. Nearly every review at the time points out the constant clueless look on Kaprisky’s face and it’s no less painful 27 years later watching her fumble her way through the melodramatic dialog.
This isn’t a bad movie. There are some moments that really work, particularly the moments more focused on mood than story or dialog. McBride pulls off some masterfully great looking shots and managed to find all the most photogenic spots in Los Angeles and the surrounding hills. While the two main characters are both hard to take in large doses they each have their moments, particularly Gere who plays up Jesse’s immature, jealous rage with great effectiveness.
The New York Times review at the time suggested that it would be easier to view the film in a positive light had it not taken upon itself the comparison to Godard’s revolutionary masterpiece. I’m coming to this movie without any particular affinity for the original film. While I appreciate the influence that the French New Wave movement had on many of the films I love from the ’70s and onward, the original films themselves just don’t do it for me.
That said, I appreciate what Godard was trying to in his version of Breathless and it should be respected. While Godard’s film was effortless and revolutionary, this remake feels forced and unoriginal. It’s quirkiness and penchant for referencing other films may have been partially influential to guys like Quentin Tarantino (who calls it one of his favorite movies) but aside from that there certainly haven’t been many films made like it, and probably for good reason.
Next Up: The first of a trio of films from 1983 based on the work of Stephen King, The Dead Zone.
September 19th, 2010 on 12:15 pm
I saw this film when it first opened with a female friend of mine who had a crush on Richard Gere. I really didn’t know what to expect because I had not seen the original Godard version (home video was still new). My friend who was enraptured with Richard Gere felt confused after seeing this film. The rest of theater also had blank looks on their face. At that time, I really didn’t have a firm opinion because I was likewise baffled. However, this film haunted my memories for many years. It was so different than what we were seeing in 1983. After seeing it again 3 years ago, I can now say that I like this remake, although I don’t think it’s fair to compare it to Godard’s version.
September 20th, 2010 on 1:48 pm
Richard: thanks for the comment. My gut reaction to this film was negative but as the weeks have passed, it actually sits a little better with me now. It certainly should not be compared to the Godard film, going for a completely different feel and vibe. It’s a movie that is inconsistent with its tone but when it hits the right tone, it’s an interesting experience.
September 30th, 2010 on 2:55 am
I must start with a confession: For many, many years this was my favourite film of all time. I can well understand how others may find it quite a mess, but for me I was transported by the atmosphere McBride achieved with this film. I think it’s one of those movies … you are either tuned into the idiosyncratic vision of McBride, or not. That doesn’t mean I go around screaming at people YOU JUST DON’T GET IT DO YOU ? !!! Rather, I mean, you either like pumpkin or you don’t, if you catch my drift … Yes it has flaws, but in the case of Breathless I was more than happy to suspend my disbelief for the ride.
I first saw this during it’s initial release to video back in 1984-ish, I would have been in my early twenties. Watched it at home one night (on VHS!). Blew me away. Yes it’s an over the top, larger than life performance by Richard, but when you see Dennis Quaid’s performance in both Great Balls of Fire (there’s the Jerry Lee Lewis thing *again*) and also with The Big Easy (both directed by McBride) you can see for sure that Gere’s performance in Breathless was exactly the performance that Jim wanted from Richard. No doubt about that.
The movie has an impending sense of fatalistic doom, even from the brightly lit and bouncy opening scene of Jesse leaving Las Vegas. You get a sense from the get-go this is not going to end well. I think the screenplay is brilliant. It takes a lot of balls to do an American remake of a film that most ‘serious’ cinemaphiles regard as the French New Wave equivalent to the Shroud of Turin.
Yet McBride and co-writer Kit Carson pull it off in bravura style. Carson went on to later write the screenplay of Paris Texas and for some reason looking at a lot of the scenes from Breathless, especially the quieter ones that seems to make a weird kind of sense. The quieter scenes and particularly those featuring the music pieces by Phillip Glass and Brian Eno are eerily reminiscent of some parts of Paris Texas with it’s Ry Cooder score.
I think that whether you like Breathless or not, hinges on whether you buy the two main leads and for me they are perfectly flawed. By that I mean yes, Kaprisky’s performance is not Meryl Streep, but it’s not supposed to be. She’s a french chick transplanted into Los Angeles. She seems to have very few friends, she just studies hard and wants to get her degree. She gets away to Vegas for a weekend to blow off steam and whilst there has a fling with Jesse (unfilmed), who then becomes infatuated with her and follows her back to Los Angeles. The movie picks up from there.
I’m no doubt going to ruffle some more movie purists feathers when I say Valerie’s performance in Breathless is as awkwardly appropriate as Sofia Coppola’s in Godfather III. Neither of them look ‘comfortable’ and I think that is the way it was intended.
Regardless of whether you feel the movie works, one must surely agree the chemistry between Gere and Kaprisky is smoking hot. Not just the sex scenes, but throughout the movie she pulls off the ‘Im-very-attracted-to-this-guy-but-I-know-he’s-bad-news’ vibe very well. Meanwhile Jesse is sexy, charismatic and street smart, but dumb as a box full of hammers. He’s a teenager in a man’s body … a handsome west-coast, street punk version of Peter Pan.
I think it is surely Richard Gere’s bravest performance. I can’t imagine too many actors around who would have the balls to go as far out on the edge as he does in this movie. You can’t go half-way in a role like this, you have to go all the way to the edge and he does that. He must have trusted Jim quite a bit and for that I congratulate him because I think they both pull it off.
The curating of the music tracks is way cool. I’ve mentioned Glass and Eno, but Message of of Love and the Dexys Midnight Runners tracks are wonderfully used in the foot chase sequence. Link Wray and Mink Deville are used to great effect … as is Suspicious Minds in the make up sex-shower scene. To wrap it up in glorious 80s style LA punk icons X let rip on ball tearing cover version of Breathless over the end credits. (This is the same X that were featured in the Tom Berenger/Charlie Sheen baseball comedy Major League with their version of Wild Thing)
Quentin Tarantino is on record as saying Breathless is one of his all time favourite movies. He would incidentally later re-cycle the Link Wray track “Rumble” into Pulp Fiction. I saw an interview with him where he said that when writing he often starts with an idea for a scene and then he will first come up with the music track(s) to play over that scene before he has even written a word of dialogue. I have wondered if Breathless was one of those movies that inspired this approach in him ?
OK, I’m gonna wrap up on this coz, I could write a novel (what, you haven’t already they say ?) A few last things.
The highly watchable Lisa Jane Persky makes her first McBride cameo as the backstabbing gum chewing sales girl at Tomachov’s workplace, McBride would have her play almost the same sassy character in The Big Easy a few years later, this time as a cop.
John P Ryan steals every scene he is in as the hard boiled Lt Parmental. A little script in-gag occurs in the above scene when the Lt and his Sgt question Tomachov the Lt says something like “Hey Tomachov are you going to drop a dime on Lujack like you did last year for us on your buddy Johnny Goddard ? ” (Of course in French John is ‘Jean’, John Goddard = Jean (Luc) Goddard.
I also love the line when the cops, closing in on Jesse, crash the ground breaking ceremony with Doctor Boudreaux. When Monica’s teacher Paul intercedes wondering what is going on Lt Parmental rounds on him and says venomously “Hey …. listen pal, don’t F. U. C. K. with the LAPD” (Spelling out the capitals) go on do it .. you know you want to) Nice piece of script.
As a final comment I was further blown away when I picked up the DVD version of this only about ten years ago to replace my tired old ex rental VHS (stop laughing) From the opening scene onwards, I was stunned at the quality of the cinematography. Further research reveals it was shot by Richard Kline near the end of his long career. Kline started in early sixties and shot The Boston Strangler, the Andromeda Strain, Soylent Green, King Kong (1976) The Mechanic, Mr Majestyk, Death Wish amongst others.
But perhaps most tellingly, from a stylistic point of view, Kline shot the luscious, sexy brilliant Body Heat for Lawrance Kasdan. Thinking about Body Heat and Breathless together and replaying scenes in your mind you can definitely see a commonality between to the look and feel of those two movies. Body Heat is a great flick which if you adjust your set to black and white would hold it’s own with any film noir from the 40s. That movie of course featured a pyromaniac character called Teddy played by a young chap called Mickey Rourke in his break out role, but that’s a story for another day …..
September 30th, 2010 on 3:38 pm
Dean: FANTASTIC post! You make a lot of really compelling points and I will admit that like many really interesting films often do, this movie sits better in my mind today than it did immediately after I finished watching it. I really had a feeling watching it that while my 2010 brain couldn’t quite make sense of it, I had a feeling it may have really been capturing something back in 1983. There are definitely parts of this movie were I was really intrigued, parts where I couldn’t stop watching and other parts that I just wasn’t sure what to make of it all. At worst, it’s a very unique and interesting film with a fantastic visual sensibility. Again, your comments are extremely appreciated and I hope to hear more from you on some of my other Back to the Movies posts.
September 30th, 2010 on 5:03 pm
Hi Matt
I think you make a good point. It’s certainly a movie of it’s time, perhaps it has an added allure for those that lived through those times.
Also, I forgot to clarify in my original post; Breathless was my ‘favourite’ film for a long while … not my ‘greatest’ film. Does it compare to The Godfather, Raging Bull, Battleship Potemkin or Casablanca ? … of course not. But for me, it was one I would pull out a re-watch many times.
What was it they said about Brando ? “Women wanted to be with him, men wanted to *be* him. I think I had a bit of a man crush on the Richard Gere of that era
If you wanted to be a guy that chicks dug big time, he was who you’d want to be like. (Refer Exhibit B “American Gigolo “)
January 19th, 2011 on 9:22 pm
Here’s a follow up to my post. Some interesting nuggets of info on Breathless from Jim McBride himself. http://www.myspace.com/tadhgtaylor/blog/533577137