Cinematic Innovations in A Bout de Soufflé 
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Cinematic Innovations in A Bout de Soufflé
A bout de soufflé by Jean-Luc Godard (1960) is full of new attempts both in its form and contents as he made it with such intention:
A Bout de Soufflé was the sort of film where anything goes: that was what it was all about. … What I wanted was to take a conventional story and remake, but differently, everything the cinema had done.1
Apparently, the film has novel, innovative features in almost every aspect of cinema including shooting, editing, narrative structure, and characters. It achieves such creativity by breaking stereotyped rules of film-making.
Godard’s shooting style was innovative. It was rather that of documentary. He used location shooting, which means shooting in real geographical locations, like real, uncontrolled streets in the city, not in artificial studio sets built for filming. As A bout de soufflé was filmed in famous locations in Paris such as the Champs Elysées, uncountable number of ordinary people appear in the film. They look back at Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) with curiosity in their faces, some even stare directly at the camera, or some cut in front of the camera. All these things blur the border between the reality and the diegesis, making the latter imperfect. So, the film not only shows real city countenance of contemporary Paris—streets crowded with busy people and roads occupied with an endless cycle of cars, but also remind the audience that they are watching a film, a fictional construct, revealing its identity by itself. Natural lighting was another innovation in shooting. Godard didn’t use any artificial lighting. The only light he used was the sunlight. For that, the cameraman Raoul Coutard, who was once a still photographer, suggested using llford HPS stock, which was a still camera stock, not a movie one. So Godard and he linked stocks to make reels lengthy enough for filming.2 As the sun is the sole light source, the
Cinematic Innovations in A Bout de Soufflé
A bout de soufflé by Jean-Luc Godard (1960) is full of new attempts both in its form and contents as he made it with such intention:
A Bout de Soufflé was the sort of film where anything goes: that was what it was all about. … What I wanted was to take a conventional story and remake, but differently, everything the cinema had done.1
Apparently, the film has novel, innovative features in almost every aspect of cinema including shooting, editing, narrative structure, and characters. It achieves such creativity by breaking stereotyped rules of film-making.
Godard’s shooting style was innovative. It was rather that of documentary. He used location shooting, which means shooting in real geographical locations, like real, uncontrolled streets in the city, not in artificial studio sets built for filming. As A bout de soufflé was filmed in famous locations in Paris such as the Champs Elysées, uncountable number of ordinary people appear in the film. They look back at Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) with curiosity in their faces, some even stare directly at the camera, or some cut in front of the camera. All these things blur the border between the reality and the diegesis, making the latter imperfect. So, the film not only shows real city countenance of contemporary Paris—streets crowded with busy people and roads occupied with an endless cycle of cars, but also remind the audience that they are watching a film, a fictional construct, revealing its identity by itself. Natural lighting was another innovation in shooting. Godard didn’t use any artificial lighting. The only light he used was the sunlight. For that, the cameraman Raoul Coutard, who was once a still photographer, suggested using llford HPS stock, which was a still camera stock, not a movie one. So Godard and he linked stocks to make reels lengthy enough for filming.2 As the sun is the sole light source, the
Bibliography: Borde, Raymon, ‘A bout de soufflé’, in Ginette Vincendeau and Peter Graham (eds), The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks (London: British Film Institute, 2009) Godard, Jean-Luc, in Tom Milne (ed.), Godard on Godard (New York: Da Capo Press, 1986) Greene, Naomi, The French New Wave: A New Look (London: Wallflower Press, 2007) MacCabe, Colin, Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics (London: British Film Institute, 1983) Marie, Michel, ‘”It really makes you sick!”: Jean-Luc Godard’s A bout de soufflé (1959).’ Chapter 15 of Susan Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), French Film: Texts and Contexts (London: Routledge, 1990) Neupert, Richard, ‘Breathless’, in Jefferey Geiger and R. L. Rutsky (eds), Film Analysis: A Norton Reader (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013) Sadoul, Georges, ‘Le quae des brumes 1960: A bout de soufflé by Jean-Luc Godard’, in Ginette Vincendeau and Peter Graham (eds), The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks (London: British Film Institute, 2009) Wilson, Emma, French Cinema Since 1950 (London: Duckworth, 1999) Filmography A Bout de Soufflé (France, dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)