Dvd/150: A BOUT DE SOUFFLE (Breathless, Jean Luc Godard, 1960)

Marking cinematographer Raoul Coutard's death and the late Jean Seberg's 78th anniversary, I watched again the film that influenced so many filmmakers, A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, and it's still exciting and provoking.

Dedicated to Monogram Pictures studios, the plot is pure film noir: small-time criminal Michel steals a car in Marseille and, while driving to Paris, shoots a policeman.  Once there, he unsuccessfully tries to borrow money while hiding out with sometime-girlfriend, American student Patricia.

Patricia has found out she is pregnant, maybe it's Michel's.  Over the course of a day, they chatter, make love, argue, but always with a strange disconnect because of language or attitude.

Fellow nouvelle vague directors Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut were involved in the script but Godard's shoot-and-run film captures the dizzying excitement of 1960s young European cinema personified by the ageless performances of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.

Shelf or charity shop? Jean will be selling the New York Herald Tribune on my shelf for some time to come..

Dvd/150: LA SIRENE DU MISSISSIPPI / MISSISSIPPI MERMAID (Francois Truffaut, 1969)

Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, LA SIRENE DU MISSISSIPPI is an oddity, exploring love and desire through the medium of a Hitchcockian thriller that now looks like a clunky tv-movie.

Louis (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who owns a tobacco factory on an Asian island, proposes to a girl he has been writing to via a lonely hearts column.  When Julie (Catherine Deneuve) arrives, she explains that she looks nothing like the photograph he has because she was nervous of her looks - Deneuve???? - so she sent a friend's photo instead.

They marry but Julie vanishes soon after with nearly all his money.  Louis pursues her to France where Julie admits her real name is Marion and she was forced into the subterfuge by her criminal lover who has left her penniless.

When Louis kills the detective tracking Marion, they go on the run - but can Marion really be trusted?

Shelf or charity shop?  La boutique de charitie...