He added that he was comfortable with a film almost wholly dependent on improvisation. “If I’m told exactly how to do everything,” he said, “I become stiff and uncomfortable.” He embraced Godard’s suggestion to “play around” with the character.
Knowing that Mr. Belmondo liked to shadowbox in character, Godard filmed him boxing in front of a mirror as he experimented with his lines: “I’m not much of a looker, but I’m quite a boxer.”
AND: There's much to say about Jean-Paul Belmondo, but this is a blog, so I'll just say one thing that is important to me. He makes a prominent appearance in the Donovan song "Sunny South Kensington" — (on the delightful "Mellow Yellow" album).The film — sexy, witty, youthful and fatalistic — became a cultural phenomenon. Mr. Belmondo became the subject of articles chronicling “le belmondisme,” his appealing air of insouciance.
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Mary Quant got stoned to say the least
Ginsberg, he ended up dry and so he took a trip out East
What's in the verses? We're invited to take a walk in the London neighborhood of South Kensington, "a groovy place to live." Donovan points out the various characters — girl in a silk blouse who "ain't no freak," "a fella with a cane umbrella" — and tells us how we might act: "flip out, skip out, trip out" and "spread your wings."
Ginsberg is presumably Allen Ginsberg, who was famously in London in 1965. The "Mellow Yellow" album came out in 1966. When did Ginsberg go to India and why? We could read this from an Indian website from 2019: "Disillusioned with America, did the poet Allen Ginsberg find an antidote to rationality in India?" ("India turned his attention 'away from his cosmic obsessions and toward the humanity around him in the swarming streets of Kolkata and Varanasi'").
As for Mary Quant, she was celebrated last year in at the V&A South Kensington Museum — South Kensington, the place where Donovan pictured her stoned in 1966 — and here's the museum's video, intended to capture that 60s vibe, half a century after the fact:
I can attest to the fact that the false eyelashes I'm wearing in that picture I used in the sidebar on my now defunct blog The Time That Blog Forgot were Mary Quant eyelashes. The photo was taken by my father in 1968, when I would have been thrilled to wear anything and everything Mary Quant, and my Aunt Dorothy, who lived in London, sent me those eyelashes.
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I enjoy Godard's particular little slice of movie-making genius, as a maker of special images; but almost none of the movies are sit-through-able. For me, that includes Breathless. Godard strikes me as an idiot-savant of movie-making. But he too has still been working in his 80s. Those GoPro video cameras seem to be a fantastic toy for him. Long may he shoot.
Is it just me, or were movies far better years ago? I used to love the French New Wave movies. It was a thing of mine for a while in my young professional years.
Did my folks used to say the same thing about their movies vs those from our time? I wonder.
At least we didn't have to choose between 7 different 'movies' made about DC or Marvel comics. Jeez. What a wasteland. (I'm sure I'll hear about this comment).
Time to rewatch "Breathless". Just watched Cinema Paradiso last night. Happen to scroll onto it as it was starting on TCM channel. I thought I'd just watch the beginning- hadn't seen it in so many years. Two or so hours later, I loved it again. I don't think 'Avengers' will do that to me.
I sat down to watch "Breathless" last night. I got about 15 minutes into it and bailed. I often do that with streaming movies on Criterion (and Netflix), but this was another one of those. Did I care what happened to this man? He was running, driving, running, driving, running....
But I am really interested in Belmondo's face. What a face! A bit like Ringo, actually.
Watching Breathless was a wonderful distraction in the middle of the school day. Sure beats conjugating verbs...
...but a genre like comedy in that it needs to be fresh...
In the American remake instead of shadow boxing it was shadow musician.
link video
Yes, good comparison to Ringo, Ann. Belmondo's somewhat funny looks made him much "cooler" as an actor than if he had been conventionally good-looking. The article applies the phrase, "allergic to pretense," and that has to have been his most charming quality. No surprise that almost all the big roles the article cites are from the '60s. I never thought of him as a great actor; he was a screen personality, which is often better.
As for Godard, your 15 minutes sounds about right, too! His super-leftist politics are the most obvious complaint about his later movies, but the real problem is that he was allergic to drama. The work of imagining characters in conflict and developing a story with any degree of human interest was just not a possibility from his toolbox of skills.
and my Aunt Dorothy, who lived in London, sent me those eyelashes
Everyone should have an Aunt like that. I had one (not named Dorothy) and I miss her.
"In the American remake..."
Ugh! That looks atrocious! So dated and unfresh. Though Jerry Lee Lewis's music (which predates the original "Breathless") seems fresh.
"when I would have been thrilled to wear anything and everything Mary Quant"
This explains a lot. Which I am not saying to be snide. Really.
For those of us immune to the thrill of quantish models as models, it heightens the mystery of a different sensibility.
Of course, from the outside, a certain allergy toward pop culture, an engrained resistance to modishness may seem even more mysterious.
Never got a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Nor Alain Delon either. Granted, they didn't make pictures in Hollywood, but when you look at some of the people who do have stars it might make you wonder.
Ginsberg was in India for the little boys, no doubt.
Belmondo wasn't traditionally handsome, but even in photos you could tell that he had charisma.
'Yes, good comparison to Ringo, Ann. Belmondo's somewhat funny looks made him much "cooler" as an actor than if he had been conventionally good-looking.'
There are a lot of actors in this category...Steve McQueen comes first to mind. More rugged and manly, but you wouldn't see him as a Calvin Klein model.
Who are the women in this category? Not traditionally beautiful but still sexy/hot...
Talk amongst yourselves...
--- that picture I used in the sidebar on my now defunct blog The Time That Blog Forgot were Mary Quant eyelashes. The photo was taken by my father in 1968, when I would have been thrilled to wear anything and everything Mary Quant... [AA]
Oh, no. No no no... be still my heart! What a perfect picture!! Did you ever get yourself onto "Hullabaloo" or "Shindig"?
That is a beautiful evocation of that time. And the Mary Quant video, awesome. We did a lot of stupid things in the '60s and we are stuck undoing what we can of the worst of it, now, but those years sure were fun. If you could avoid the worst of the heartbreaks and the evil side of them.
When I watched Breathless 6 months ago, or so, I thought it was interesting that Godard just filmed the actors as they walked through the streets. You could see people walking by and noticing the camera.
Some of the French new wave films that must have seemed to be so daring in their time--Breathless, Jules and Jim--seem dated in ways that, say, the Maltese Falcon, the Lady from Shangai, or High Siera--don't.
1. I can't watch Breathless because of Jean Seberg's French accent, which always sounded to me like a parody of an American speaking French. It just grates on my ears.
2. Mellow Yellow is a vastly under appreciated album from the '60s. Every song on it except the title song is excellent, with Hampstead Incident and Young Girl Blues standing out.
And The Left has been looking for the "antidote" to rationality ever since . . . .
Some members of The Hive, such as Howard, obviously found it.
Belmondo seemed like a tough street guy. Actually, his parents were artists. Maybe he rebelled against them, because he was a boxer before he was an actor.
Actors can confuse you like that. The tough guys often came from privileged backgrounds. The sophisticated ones sometimes came up from poverty. And that, is why they call it "acting."
A friend and I visited London in 1967. We went to Abbey Road, the Mary Quant store, and I had my haircut at Vidal Sasson.. I was also a readhead back then. Of course, we never went out without our eyelashes. I think we looked pretty good.. Also, saw Breathless with John Paul Belmondo (sexy heart throb) but my favorite French movie of that era was the Umbrellas of Cherbourg. We were pretty wild in the ‘60s but compared to today that was the age of innocence.
His face was more memorable than his movies. I saw Breathless years ago. It was watchable, but I didn't get what was so special about it. All the New Wave movies with the exception of The Four Hundred Blows were overrated. I think Godard made one movie where Bridget Bardot appeared naked so give him credit for that.
That’s a sweet photo from ‘68. Thanks for introducing me to Mary Quant. I’d never heard of her.
The American version really was bad. Except the actress was just beyond sexy. That can't be argued.
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