The narrative form in this scene has many temporal and special discontinuities. Jump cuts are quite frequently used. Towards the end of the scene there is a shot of Patricia and Michel in bed under the covers. The next cut is verité.

The next cut is basically of the same angle, but only one of them is under the covers. Before these jump cuts while Patricia gets into bed there is a small jump cut. It seems as if only two or three frames are missing from the shot. The jump cut is repeated throughout the rest of the film as well. The scene when both Michel and Patricia are in the taxi, Michel starts yelling at the taxi driver, and after every sentence there is a cut.

The only thing that noticeably changes is the position of the driver and the scenery outside the window. Another example of a jump cut can be seen when Patricia meets in the diner with the American journalist. In this scene, the journalist is talking to Patricia while the jump cuts happen. The conversation of the journalist is not divided though. The sound in this scene is foundational over the visual jump cuts. Another example of this situation is when Michel is talking about how lovely Patricia is. Michel is speaking while the camera frames Patricia. After several jump cuts the sound still seems like it flows normally. The jump cut goes directly against Classical Hollywood film style. It does not support the idea of invisible editing. The narrative is broken up and temporal duration is confused. This type of editing seems awkward and crude especially the scene where only three frames appear to be missing. This style also draws attention to itself. The viewer cannot help but notice these cuts. Along with it’s intermediate approach to making the film, self-reflexivity and film references define this film as being one of the first French New Wave films.

Breathless also has many scenes in which the action fails to match. In the final scene of the movie, the cops confront Michel. The man in the car starts to throw Michel the gun. After the next shot of Michel, the man throws the gun beginning from when he starts to throw it, which we have already seen. The lighting in Patricia’s apartment is not the standard three point lighting system of Classical Hollywood. The main light source is through the apartment’s window that usually creates backlighting. While Patricia and Michel face each other to speak, the halo effect can be seen on the profile of their face caused by the backlighting of the window. This lighting is natural. It seems if little or no superfluous lights were used to film this scene. This type of realist lighting is apparent throughout the entire film. The sound of the conversation in Patricia’s apartment seems to be natural. It seems as if it were not done in a sound studio. At one point of their conversation, off-screen sirens can be heard from the street. These sirens drown out the conversation. This would never happen in a Classical Hollywood film, where usually the dialogue is the most important aspect of the film to move on the plot. But in Breathless, the conversation in Patricia’s apartment does very little to further develop the plot. The development of the narrative is also unconventional. The film’s action seems to slow down and then jolt forward abruptly. The narrative is slowed down, and barely any new elements to the narrative are introduced 25 minutes in the scene of Michel and Patricia in her apartment. The long take is used several times and is especially noticeable when Michel and Patricia talk about how many people they have slept with. Instead of using shot-reverse shot or cuts to eliminate any unmotivated detail, the camera simply pans and tilts from a close up of Michel to Patricia and then moves back again. The long take is used in other conversations throughout the movie as well. When Michel first meets Patricia they talk on the street and the shot is uncut. Also when Michel has a conversation with Tolmatchoff, the whole conversation is continuously shot. These long takes of conversation are in deep contrast with the action sequences of the movie. When Michel kills the cop, there are several edits in an elliptical fashion. The action is hard to understand with the scene’s temporal duration. The next shot is of a quick flashback of Michel getting into the stolen car with his jacket on. This flashback is very quick and confusing. One of the unconventional techniques most often used is the jump cut. The jump cut makes the viewer aware of the editing style. The direct address is another unconventional technique that is seen throughout the film as a motif. In Classical Hollywood, actors knew never to look into the camera. In Breathless, the direct address of the characters and the jump cut make the viewer become self-conscious as he realizes that he is watching a film. New Wave films also have self-conscious references to film history. Breathless makes many references to American popular culture, particularly gangster movies. Throughout the whole film, Michel sees himself as an American gangster. With his gangster hat, glasses, and chain-smoking, everything Michel does is motivated by pretending to be an American gangster. Even in death the petty car thief pretends to be a gangster in making references to American film by closing his own eyes. His repeated action of touching his lip is a reference to Humphrey Bogart. When Michel goes to the theater he views a picture of Bogart and touches his lips. The scene ends with an iris, which is an obvious reference to film history. Breathless also has many aspects that could be considered Postmodern. The scene with Patricia and the American in the diner with the fragmentary visuals, and underlying foundational sound, is reminiscent of the music video of the postmodern world. Breathless also exemplifies the collapse of distinctions between high and low art, as Breathless, B-movie, became a popular movie of the time. In conclusion, Breathless uses unprecedented conventions to achieve a narrative discontinuity due in large to discontinuities in editing.

A hand-held camera is used to shoot the scene in Patricia’s apartment. This is apparent with the shakiness of the frame, and the movements made by the camera. Most noticeable in the long take when Michel speaks of how many women he has slept with. The camera movement from Michel to Patricia seems like it was achieved with a hand-held camera. The hand-held camera is used in other scenes, notably in the scene of Michel driving before he kills the cop. The camera is small and movable enough for a cameraman to sit in the passenger seat and shakily film Michel as he drives down the street. The hand-held camera is also used for tracking shots in many conversations that are long takes. In the scene where Michel meets with Tolmatchoff, the camera follows Michel around recording him as walks through the building. A tracking shot can also be seen when Michel first meets Patricia. The camera tracks backwards and films the couple on the street walking toward it while Patricia sells the New York Herald Tribune. When Patricia turns Michel into the police, a tracking shot follows her around the house as she speaks to herself about her feelings towards Michel. The tracking shot is necessary in all the conversations to film the whole conversation in a long take without omitting any of the detail or without cutting. At the end of the movie, a tracking shot chases Michel as he runs down the street after being shot. A tracking shot is also taken of Patricia as she runs after him. During the scene in Patricia’s apartment there are several different point of view shots. Patricia rolls up a poster and looks through it at Michel. The next shot is off Michel through the rolled up poster. The circle of the poster frames the shot as the camera zooms in on Michel who is looking directly at the camera. There is another point of view from Michel’s perspective when Michel is looking at a magazine in bed. The next shot is a close up of naked women in the magazine. Another point of view from Michel is shot as Patricia hangs up and is looking at a poster. Michel touches her butt, and the camera tilts down to get a medium close up off his hand. These point of view shots are important to the understanding of the movie. Michel’s point of view is centered around sex, and Patricia’s point of view is of Michel, as she questions whether she loves him or not. The mise-en-scene of the scene in Patricia’s apartment has props and acting that are motifs that a carried throughout the film. Michel’s playful facial gestures, are repeated by Patricia, and Michel makes the faces again as he dies at the end of the film. Michel touches his lips in the scene in the apartment, and frequently throughout the film. He touches his lips when he goes to the cinema, and views a picture of Bogart. Patricia also touches her lips after Michel dies at the end of the film. Michel is always wearing a hat, smoking a cigarette, and wearing glasses. In the apartment scene, Patricia wears Michel’s hat, as she is being playful with Michel. She also has a cigarette in her hand. Michel also smokes during most of the scene as well. Glasses are used throughout the film in different ways. When Patricia is confronted by the police, about whether or not she knows Michel, she first answers that she does not. The detective then asks her again. Patricia is then shown wearing sunglasses and smoking and she identifies Michel to the police. In another scene, when Patricia is interviewing the novelist about his greatest ambition, he takes off his glasses and says, “to become immortal than die.” Patricia than mimics him, taking off her glasses. After she removes her glasses, she looks directly into the camera, and then the shot dissolves. Direct address is used in several other shots throughout Breathless. When Michel is driving before he kills the cop, he looks directly into the camera, addressing the audience. The motif of the direct address ends the film when Patricia looks into the camera, touches her lips, and then turns away. Breathless is film made in the third stage of modernism in cinema. In French it was coined, “la nouvelle vague” or the French New Wave. The young directors of this period admired both Neorealism and American popular cinema. With their revolt against cinema of quality, and love of American films, they managed to mix this all with their own New Wave conventions, and they began to make films with a more immediate approach. NewWave films have an unglamorous, casual look. Films were shot on location, without studios. This can be seen throughout Breathless, with the natural lighting in Patricia’s apartment, and on location shooting in the streets of Paris. The sloppy, amateurish look of New Wave was magnified by the use of the hand-held camera. Because previously the hand-held camera was used for documentaries, it gives Breathless a realistic look. The hand-held camera could go in places where heavy cameras could not. The shots from within vehicles, such as when Michel was driving at the beginning of the movie and the taxi shots, were achieved with this camera. Because of the camera’s mobility, tracking shots were frequently used which can be seen throughout many of the long takes in Breathless, including the scene with Michel and Tolmatchoff’s conversation in the travel agency. The plots of French New Wave films often contain unmotivated detail, and do not progress in conventional narrative structures, and have loose narratives with ambiguous endings. The films often have protagonists that are not goal-oriented and that are defined by spur of the moment actions. Every action of Michel seems to be a spur of the moment action. In one scene he is reading a newspaper, the next he is ordering food, and the next he is talking to somebody about money. Unmotivated detail also clutters narrative structure. Most of the dialogue of the movie does nothing to further the plot, especially the 25-minute scene with Patricia. In one scene of the movie as Michel is waking across the street, a man gets hit by car. This action does not do anything to further the plot, and seems extraneous and confusing. The ending of this film has a sense of closure when we realize that Michel is dead, but many questions still are left about the film. We still do not understand the characters. Patricia acts like she is in love with Michel in one scene, and then turns him into the police in another. Especially confusing is the last shot of Patricia, when without emotion she turns to the camera and asks what “degueulasse” means. Discontinuous editing supports this narrative discontinuity. In the opening scene eye-lines do not match. There are also no establishing shots. When Michel visits the first girl in the apartment, a reference is made about how Michel left his jacket in the car.