Playlist: Breathless

It's the 50th anniversary of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, a film whose cultural and artistic influence has been referenced as canon by critics for decades. Ironically, that may be the very reason why I had never watched it before. There's something off-putting, perhaps even intimidating, about landmark works. What if I don't like it? Or worse, what if I don't "get" it?

Breathless was even more of a challenge because somehow I knew next to nothing about its plot. Did it even have one or was it one of "those" foreign films? I did know it kick-started the French New Wave movement which in turn inspired the greatest directors of our time including Scorsese, Coppola, and Tarantino.

So, I watched it. And it was good. Unfortunately, I can never claim to have experienced the revolutionary spirit viewers did in 1960, but I can understand their reaction. A half century later, it's still fresh and hip, the vitality of 60s Euro cool alive in every shot. For an unexplainable reason that I'm sure the French have a word for, the film just feels important, or better, valuable.

While there is a lot of talking (get this: Godard wrote most of the dialogue the morning of each scene), there is also a solid narrative. A young thug (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is on the run from the cops and goes on the lam in Paris with his seemingly innocent American girlfriend played by Jean Seberg, whose face became the symbol not only of the film, but of la Nouvelle Vague era. This is undeniably her film and there's no way to watch this without falling under her spell.

Seberg's life is even more fascinating. She became an international sensation at 17 when she won an 18,000 girl casting call for Otto Preminger's Joan of Arc biopic. The movie subsequently bombed and critics hit Seberg hard. On top of that, she would later say that she never was able to get over Preminger's psychological abuse on the set. Then Breathless happened and for awhile she was the most sought after actress in the business. But she stopped acting at the peak of her career and turned to various left-wing political groups. Her affiliation with the Black Panthers landed her in the FBI's cross-hairs. A devastating miscarriage, alcohol, prescription drugs, and clinical depression led to Seberg committing suicide at 40. Triste.