Reeling Backward: "Breathless" (1960)

My French New Wave education somehow never included "Breathless," one of the most seminal in the movement of critics-turned-moviemakers and the first feature by Jean-Luc Godard. Alas, I found it as underwhelming as "The 400 Blows" was amazing and transportive. Solid good-not-great category.

"I'll take Truffaut; you can keep Godard" has been my semi-comedic quip about the two most iconic figures of the New Wave, and I found that held true here as well.

My take is Truffaut told stories, while Godard is a master of mood and moments. He seems ensorceled by his own shots, lingering over a face in profile as cigarette smoke wafts across the cheeks. Godard is closer to Terrence Malick in this regard -- more visual stylist than storyteller -- and my reservations about him are well-known.

I'm sure "Breathless" seemed very fresh and daring in 1960, but today it's an artifact of rebellion.

Jean-Paul Belmondo juts out his jaw and and tips his hat low over his eyes in a studied pose of nonchalance. A street hood who idolizes Humphrey Bogart, Michel Poiccard (based on a real car thief), is a self-styled loverboy who treats women like disposable garbage.

He professes to love Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) despite having only met her last month and slept with her once. We quickly sense that she is simply the most readily accessible girl to help him escape from the law and underscore his self-image. Bogie always had a looker on his arm, so he must, too. Michel keeps insisting his love to her so much that he comes to believe it himself.

Michel is very much a liar in the George Costanza tradition: he so believes his own lies that they eventually become his truth.

Early on he shoots a motorcycle policeman chasing him in one of his many stolen cars, and spends the rest of the movie making plans to run away to Italy. (It's unclear why Italy; I'm sure the two countries had extradition for murder in 1960. My guess is he figures it'll be easier for him to disappear there.)

But two things hold up his plans: a friend, Antonio (Henri-Jacques Huet), who owes him a substantial amount of money; and Patricia, who he wants to run away with him. She's a 20-year-old privileged American who's quickly climbing the ladder as a journalist, and thus has very little reason to take Michel up on his offer.

She dallies and dithers while ostensibly accompanying him as he waits for his money. He has a check from Antonio but needs cash, and the friend seems to be ducking him. (One wonders why the transaction couldn't be done by mail safely from Genoa or wherever.)

Godard and Truffaut tended to make very male-dominated movies, at least when they were starting out, so it's clear Godard invested most of his screenwriting energy into Michel. (Truffaut and Claude Chabrol contributed the story.) They saw him as a charismatic cad, a playful man/boy who rejected traditional masculine roles like family, career, fatherhood. He is the opposite of stability.

But honestly I found him rather dull as a protagonist. We figure out his shtick pretty quickly and then wait to see how far he'll take it.

Patricia is the much more interesting character, a woman who conveys submissive feminine sensibilities while always remaining steadfastly independent in her attitudes and choices.

Michel steals the key to her appointment and moves into her home, and her bed, without asking permission. However, nothing happens, between the sheets or elsewhere, without her initiative.

"Breathless" was seen as a very sexy movie when it came out, and it still is. Seberg and Belmondo were both compelling subjects for the camera, attractive in non-conventional ways.

She had close-cropped blonde hair and a thin, almost boyish figure, giving her an overtly androgynous presence. Belmondo was a bit horse-faced with one of those noses that doesn't seem that big until you see it from certain angles, and then it's ginormous. Naturally lean in the Brad Pitt mold, he had a six-pack before anyone had words for it.

There's no nudity to speak of, though some thrashing under the sheets leaves no doubt they're having sex, which was pretty risque, at least for American audiences of the time.

Michel has a repeated gesture -- which Patricia later copies -- where he draws the pad of his thumb across his lips in a very deliberate way, which appears to have no purpose other than as a sensual signature. He's also perpetually smoking, with fat unfiltered cigarettes protruding from a half-open mouth.

I'm sure the Freudians had a field day with the film's oral fixation.

Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard shot the movie cinema verite style with most handheld cameras and no lighting. It, along with jump-cut editing by Cecile Decugis, gives the film a restless, buoyant energy, like a juvenile puppy who just can't sit still.

Daniel Boulanger plays the police inspector hot on the trail of Michel, fat and imperious. Roger Hanin is Carl, an older journalist who is mentoring Patricia, giving her opportunities to interview a famous filmmaker (Jean-Pierre Melville), while also pressuring her into having sex. Michel follows them and is incensed with jealousy.

It may be this event, more than any actual emotions experienced, that prompt his obsessive behavior.

Belmondo and Seberg both became major international stars overnight as a result of "Breathless." The recent film "Seberg" follows her life later on when was dogged by the FBI for her sympathies with the Black Power movement, with Kristen Stewart portraying her as a woman of immense passion and naivete.

The ending of "Breathless" was deliberately ambiguous, with Michel dying in the streets after being shot in the back by police. With them and Patrician standing over him, he uses his last breaths -- "out of breath" is the literal translation of the title -- to spit insults at her while repeating some face-making expressions they had exchanged earlier in the movie.

She had just turned him into the police, mostly as a way to finally be rid of him, so it could be Michel is genuinely incensed at her. The impish mugging, though, suggest he's talking about the world in general and his own life, about which he seems to have little regard.

My guess is if I were an average filmgoer in 1960 I would have been amazed by "Breathless." It was a new type of cinema that was obsessed with youth and movement. The problem with being enamored with the young is that they don't stay that way, and today the movie feels old, trapped by conventions rather than subverting them.

Reeling Backward: "Fahrenheit 451" (1966)

Francois Truffaut called "Fahrenheit 451" his "saddest and most difficult" filmmaking experience, and it's not hard to see this disappointment translated onto the screen.

Star Oskar Werner battled throughout the production with the filmmaker, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jean-Louis Richard, based on the seminal novel by science fiction icon Ray Bradbury. It was Truffaut's first film in English and with color.

Werner was Austrian and spoke English with a heavy accent, which makes him stand out from the rest of the cast, which is largely British. Truffaut himself spoke little English, and as a result he failed to properly monitor the tone and intonation of his actors. Most speak in a curiously flat cadence, like Werner, or rush through their dialogue as if they're in a race, like Cyril Cusack.

These things could actually work for the film, since it's about a dystopian future where all books are banned and society molds its citizenry into anti-intellectual complacency. Since people talk without thinking, their speech would tend to be scattered. And because Montag is a  fireman who eventually rebels against his comrades, in some ways it makes sense for him to be different from the pack.

But I think these are not attributes of the movie; rather, they are unintentional problems that creep into the mix. Truffaut himself preferred the French-dubbed version of the film, by all accounts.

Of course, in Bradbury's haunting vision, firemen do not put out infernos but start them -- bursting into houses, jackbooted thugs dressed in militaristic black uniforms. They are highly trained in the ways of hiding, and uncover all the illegal books in the abode and set them ablaze. If enough books are found, they may just condemn the entire house and put it to the flamethrower torch.

As the story opens, Montag is the finest fireman in his station, and is informed that he has been selected to replace the Captain (Cusack) when he retires shortly. But with the help of a young schoolteacher who lives near him, Montag begins secreting away the books and reading them instead of destroying them. All that reading gets him to thinking, which is the last thing the controllers of this strangled society want.

What's interesting about "Fahrenheit" the movie is that the leaders of this system are never glimpsed or overtly referred to. Bradbury often said that his book was not about censorship so much as the way television and a lack of reading has a brain-deadening effect on people. Large television "wall sets" occupy every home, blaring virtually nonstop and lulling viewers into a state of dreamlike passivity.

We see the effects wrought by the great and mighty Oz, but not Oz himself. Who actually runs the government and the media? We never know.

In perhaps the film's strangest scene, Montag's wife Linda is selected to "appear" in a live play broadcast over the airwaves. (It's never made explicit, but it seems clear that there is only one channel playing.) This consists of two men discussing arrangements for a dinner party, and occasionally turning toward the camera to seek as Linda's advice, which she delivers from memorized dialogue. Presumably, the rest of the audience sees Linda's responses during this time. She flubs her first line, but the play keeps rolling along as if nothing happened.

Linda is played by Julie Christie, who also plays the rebellious schoolteacher Clarisse (wearing a horrendously fake-looking wig.) Truffaut obviously sees Clarisse and Linda as two sides of the same coin, but the gimmick casting is a distraction. (Terence Stamp, who was cast prior to Werner, left the project because he felt Christie's dual roles would upstage him.)

The only other notable actor is Anton Diffring as Fabian, a fellow fireman, Montag antagonist and competitor for his position. I'm not sure if he ever speaks more than a line or two of dialogue; the role operates strictly by having the hawk-faced Diffring cast suspicious glances at Montag from time to time.

Visually, the film is an orgy of oversaturated colors, intended I think to give everything a hyper-real look that's supposed to be disconcerting.Truffaut's camera work is surprisingly staid and pedestrian -- other than a few pans, the view hardly ever seems to move. The musical score, highlighted by a fast-paced little march whenever the firemen are on the move, is repetitive and silly.

Truffaut stripped much of the futuristic science fiction elements out of the story, perhaps to make it more relatable to everyday life but probably also for budgetary concerns. The one genuinely "sci-fi" shot, of a group of policemen wearing jet-packs searching the countryside for Montag, is simply laughable. They move in precise formation, instead of spreading out to make their search more effective. I think Truffaut was simply enamored of the image, logic be damned.

A morality lesson with little juice, "Fahrenheit 451" never brings the human story to a boil.

2 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977)

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is a film of visual awe and spectacular imagination, but it's not much of a human story.

Watching it for perhaps the first time in a decade, I was struck by how much the childlike wonderment and special effects stand the test of time. "Close Encounters" is less a movie about aliens from outer space than about humans, what motivates and frightens us, and how we can reach the best inside ourselves despite our many weaknesses and failings.

But the narrative is surprisingly straightforward and spare, and the characterizations are even skimpier. Roy Neary, the Muncie electric company lineman played by Richard Dreyfuss, is the only character with any kind of depth. And even that is subservient to the plot rather than springing from within.

Roy goes through a dark-and-dreary phase, epitomized by the now-iconic mashed potatoes scene, but it doesn't last very long or linger on the impact of his alien obsession on his emotions. Or those of his family, for that matter.

Consider this movie told from the perspective of Roy's wife Ronnie, played by Teri Garr. In that sense, it's the story of a guy who abandons his wife and kids to go wandering after lights in the sky, even making out with some other alien-chasing hussy before fleeing to a black hole in space from whence no child support payments ever returned.

Or from the perspective of the red jumpsuit-wearing team members who are potential pilgrims to go aboard the aliens' ship and learn their ways. They've spent years training for a totally out-there scenario, probably sidelined lucrative careers to study in a field that garners only mockery from their peers, and when the big moment finally arrives some guy who wanders in from out of the rocky hillside gets picked by the little critters instead. Bummer.

I was surprised by how much the 34-year-old special effects still resonate. The spaceships remain indistinct and alien-looking, even at the end when we get to see the mother ship full-on. They seem to have been created without regard to human concepts of physics and morphology, which is at it should be.

In general, I like the way Spielberg (in one of his rare screenwriting credits) conceives of how the first encounter between humans and aliens would happen. There's lots of secretiveness and shenanigans by the government, but their approach is passive and peaceful rather than the usual warlike way they're depicted -- firing tank guns at flying saucers, etc.

One new observation: I would like to solve the mystery of Lance Henriksen's participation in the film. He is glimpsed ever so briefly in the final moments of the film, as the mother ship is lifting off. But he's just one of dozens of extras/minor players who are seen lifting their faces to the sky. And yet he is credited (as "Robert") among the principle cast.

Is this another example of a major character reduced to a few blips of screen time via clever editing, a la Peter Coyote in "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial"? I did a Google search to see if I could find out anything more about Henriksen's role in "Close Encounters," but could find nothing.

Did Lance Henriksen get body-snatched in post-production?

This film was a big deal at the time it came out, but I think the fact that the reputation of "Close Encounters" has faded considerably with the passage of time is no accident. It's a terrific bit of imagineering, but it's ultimately a minor work in the Spielberg filmography.

3 stars out of four