A Bout de Souffle

The film A Bout De Soufflé- 'Breathless' is a 1960's French Thriller film directed by Jean-Luc Godard- his first feature film. One of the first and most influential films of the French New Wave Movement. At the time, the film attracted much attention for its bold visual style and the innovative editing use of jump cuts. Hand- held camera is also used frequently in the opening of this thriller, this combined perfectly with the use of jump cuts as together, they are able to remind the audience that it is a film, and not real life. In our group we found the use of hand held camera extremely effective- the quirky, uneven style that is produces is one that we would like to include on our 5 minute opening thriller. The style enables the audience to become part of the action during the film, yet it also adds a sense of mystery and confusion- which is what we would like to create, to keep the audience engaged and wanting to continue watching to discover more about the characters and the plot. In this film they also break a convention of filming- as the character looks directly at the camera and engages with the audience. A unique twist which therefore allows the audience to empathize with the character more efficiently, yet as a group we thought that it took away some element of professionalism within the film, and therefore came to the conclusion that we would not want to include this in our opening- to keep it as 'suspense building' as possible. A Bout De Soufflé includes inspiration from a few conventions of 'Film Noir' which includes; the black and white shots adding a sense of mystery and distance between the audience and the characters, plus the city scape juxtaposed against the rural landscape where much of the action takes place. This use of juxtaposition could be considered when we start to choose locations and settings for our thriller opening clip, it keeps the audience on their toes as it flicks from one location to the next. This was present in the film 'Psycho' as the city landscape at the start is then intertwined with the rural landscape where the hotel is set.

Lauren Taylor.