Tuesday, October 21, 2008

I believe I still had my breath during Breathless...

The film Breathless reminded me of home movies I made with my friends when I was younger. We didn’t have any editing equipment or computer programs, so we would film a scene, stop filming, and then pick up right there for the next scene. The cuts were definitely not continuous. Breathless, like my home movies, was choppy and sometimes hard to follow. Although I sometimes found my self saying, “what the heck!?!?” to a scene, the abruptness did add to the film.

The film was a little hard to follow with the abrupt cuts because sometimes the scene break didn’t make sense. It was not invisible, which is definitely what I am used to. I felt like the editors choice to make the cuts choppy made me feel out of the film, rather than immersed in it.

The choppiness added humor to the film. When Michel kills the police officer it isn’t dramatic, but rather kind of silly because it shows him shooting the guy and then cuts to another scene very quickly. There were other times when I found myself laughing because the cuts didn’t make sense or were just plain amusing.

I’m not completely sure what to think of Breathless just yet, but I do know the type of editing used made the film sometimes hard to follow, but also it contributed to humor.

Add on: I liked the casting. Jean Seberg, who played Patricia Franchini, had a great look and hair cut for her part!

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