A road bump in my journey that i certainly didn't anticipate was how long it was going to take to get access to some of the films in the countdown. My primary idea was to rent them from my online rental company, but having had this next title on my queue for a good month before it finally arrives at my doorstep, i may need to come up with a different strategy.
Anyway without further ado the #100 on my countdown is....
Breathless (A bout de Souffle) (1960)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Henri-Jacques Huet
Regarded as Godard's masterpiece and the film that could arguably have started what we now know as 'The French New Wave' or 'nouvelle vague', this is a classic film to start of my countdown.
When a young french thief kills a policeman, he goes on the run to Paris where he meets up with an old American girlfriend in which he tries to entice her to move to Italy with him before the authorities close in on him.
Even though i am watching this film decades after it was made i still find some comfort in the all too familiar dizzying cuts and edits that we find in regularity on TV adverts and pop videos. A real 'in the face' film at the time, Godard created techniques that would have been shunned by Hollywood on its release but instead works in the complete opposite. A film with no real plot and intention of where it is going to end up but i found myself glued to the screen with some impressive sequences and dialogue. My particular favourite is the scene where the two main characters are holed up in the bedroom with Belmondo's character trying to seduce his ex-girlfriend. A discussion ensues that seems to go on for the better part of the film which done incorrectly would of sent me to sleep, instead i find myself gripped to the quickfire interchange of the two and by the time he finally gets what he wanted, you wish they would of carried on for longer.
A fine film that does justice at being my entry into this countdown, a film that has introduced me to another fine director's work.
Englishozzy
