‘Instead of finding something a long time before, I’ll find it just before.’
Jean-Luc Godard

The 1960 crime drama 'A Bout de Souffle' (Breathless) was written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. His first full-length film, it was one of the key works that ushered in French ‘nouvelle vague’ cinema.

Patricia: I want to know what's behind your face. I've looked at it for ten minutes now, and I still know nothing, nothing, nothing. I'm not sad, but I'm scared.

The movie is remarkable for its cool detachment and moral ambiguity; its natural feel and documentary style; its freewheeling conversations and precipitous pace. In its making, Godard embraced looseness and liberation, a kind of Strategic Spontaneity.

Michel: Don't use the brakes. Cars are made to go, not to stop!

Jean-Paul Belmondo plays petty criminal Michel, who steals a car in Marseille and then impulsively kills a policeman on a country road. He is tall and dapper, sporting a jacket and tie, silver chains, sunglasses and fedora. He walks with a swagger and a Gauloises glued to his lips.

Michel: If you don't like the sea... or the mountains... or the big city... then get stuffed!

Michel is also reckless and erratic, sexist and cynical, a fantasist who styles himself on Humphrey Bogart.

Michel: There's no need to lie. It's like poker. The truth is best. The others still think you're bluffing, so you win.

Michel flees to Paris, hoping to call in a loan that will fund an escape to Italy. There he hooks up with one-time girlfriend Patricia, played by Jean Seberg. She is an American student, an aspiring journalist who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the grands boulevards. With shorn blonde hair, wearing a pleated skirt, stripey shirt and shades, she seems modern and carefree. But she is gripped by youthful anxieties.

Patricia: If I could dig a hole and hide in it, I would…I don't know if I'm unhappy because I'm not free, or if I'm not free because I'm unhappy.

We spend time with Patricia and Michel as she pursues various journalistic assignments, and he chases down his money. They watch a Western together at the cinema and pass through a crowd welcoming President Eisenhower to Paris. They walk and wait and smoke; drive around the streets, hang out in her apartment and make love. Periodically he buys a newspaper to see if the police are closing in on him.

Patricia: It's sad to fall asleep. It separates people. Even when you're sleeping together, you're all alone.

All the time they talk. They discuss cultural and gender differences, Patricia’s grammar and where to place a poster in her apartment. They consider fear of aging, the shortcomings of modern architecture and the nature of their relationship.

Patricia: You know you said I'm scared, Michel. It's true, I'm scared. Because I want you to love me. But at the same time, I want you to stop loving me.

Godard captures the irregular rhythms and logical inconsistencies of young people’s everyday speech. The conversation ranges from macro to micro; from profound to trivial; from engaged to detached. The protagonists are often melodramatic and solipsistic, caught up in their own private worlds, oblivious to broader social concerns.

Patricia: We look each other in the eyes, and it means nothing.

Godard set out to create a documentary feel. He briefed cinematographer Raoul Coutard to shoot on a hand-held Cameflex camera with minimal crew and limited lighting. Most of the movie had to be dubbed in post-production, because the Cameflex was noisy and incapable of synchronized sound. Street scenes were filmed without permits, Coutard hiding in a postal cart with a hole for the lens.

Michel: Once you look for someone, you never find them.

For interior sequences, Godard dispensed with a complicated dolly and instead pushed Coutard around in a wheelchair. In the editing, he employed jump cuts, abruptly propelling the action from one sequence to another.

Patricia: I’m shutting my eyes tight, so everything goes black. But I can’t do it. It’s never entirely black.

Having drafted a traditional screenplay for the first 14 minutes of action, Godard dispensed with it and decided to write each day’s script the night before. He conducted only brief rehearsals, so as to encourage natural performances. Shooting days could range from 15 minutes to 12 hours, depending on how many ideas he had had that morning.

Patricia: I was just thinking…I can’t decide.
Michel: Thinking about what?
Patricia: I don’t know. Otherwise, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Earlier this year, the only known script of ‘A Bout de Souffle’ was put up for auction. (Kim Willsher, The Guardian 20 March 2025) This document comprises just some 70 pages of Godard’s handwritten notes and synopses of various scenes.

In a 1968 edition of Cahiers du Cinéma, Godard explained his approach to writing the script.

‘I had written the first scene and, for the rest, I had a huge number of notes corresponding to each scene. I said to myself, this is outrageous! I stopped everything. Then I thought about it … Instead of finding something a long time before, I’ll find it just before. When you know where you’re going, it should be possible. It’s not improvisation, it’s last-minute fine-tuning.’

Godard’s techniques for shooting realistic characters and spontaneous behaviour may seem familiar to us. Most movies and theatre productions today seek some sense of naturalism and authenticity. But they were revelatory 65 years ago.

Patricia: I’m not thinking about anything. I’d like to think about something, but I can’t seem to.

I’m sure there’s a lesson here for us in the world of commercial communication. Sometimes, in endeavouring to control outcomes, we can over-plan. We dissect the detail, micromanage the process, manicure the execution. At its worst, this can eradicate the opportunity for serendipity and happenstance. It asphyxiates the idea.

Michel: Are you scared?
Patricia: It’s too late to be scared.

Perhaps we too should embrace a little Strategic Spontaneity. Instead of finding something a long time before, we should try finding it just before.

Michel: Informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, lovers love.

Inevitably, at the end of 'A Bout de Souffle,' Michel gets his comeuppance. He embraces his fate like one of his film noir heroes. And he has a rare moment of clarity about his flawed relationship with Patricia.

Michel: When we talked, I talked about me and you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.

'We say to ourselves when we are twenty,
We are the kings of the world,
And that forever
There will be in our eyеs
All of the blue sky.
It’s the timе of love,
The time of friends
And of adventure.
When time comes and goes,
We think of nothing
Although we are injured.
Because the time of love
Puts in your heart
A lot of heat
And happiness.’
Francoise Hardy, ‘Le Temps de L’Amour’ (L Morisse, A Salvet J Dutronc)(Translated)

No. 523

‘All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.’

Jean-Luc Godard (also attributed to DW Griffith)

Jean-Luc Godard was a cinematic revolutionary. A leading figure of the French Nouvelle Vague in the 1960s, his films were fast-paced and cool-headed, semi-scripted and free-flowing. He shot in natural light, with hand-held cameras and no makeup. He mixed high and low culture, dramatic and documentary forms.

‘A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.’

Godard sought to redefine film structure and style. He ignored the ‘fourth wall’ and his characters made asides to the camera. He was completely comfortable with discontinuity and digression.

For Godard necessity was the mother of invention: his famous ‘jump cut’ technique was initially developed to speed the action along; he used a wheelchair for tracking shots because he couldn’t afford a dolly; and he sometimes employed inexperienced actors because he liked their awkward charm.

However, despite the apparent looseness of Godard’s style, he always had a plan:

‘There is no point in having sharp images when you have fuzzy ideas.’

Throughout his movies Godard repeatedly returned to the theme of miscommunication. In his breakthrough film, A Bout de Souffle, Michel, a small time gangster played by an always smoking Jean-Paul Belmondo, sums up a flawed relationship thus:

‘When we talked, I talked about me and you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.’

Similarly in Pierrot le Fou the ill-starred lovers consider whether they are really suited to each other:

Ferdinand: ‘Why do you look so sad?’
Marianne: ‘Because you talk to me in words and I look at you with feelings.’

In Godard’s 1962 film, Vivre Sa Vie, the luminous Anna Karina plays Nana, a young woman struggling to survive alone in the big city. Nana initiates a conversation with a philosopher in a café.

‘Suddenly I don’t know what to say. It happens to me a lot. I think first about whether they’re the right words. But when the moment comes to speak, I can’t say it. Why must one always talk? I think one should often just keep quiet, live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean.’

I’m sure we can all, on occasion, sympathise with this sentiment: that we cannot properly express how we feel; that people talk too much; that words have lost their meaning.

Yet we may also find ourselves agreeing with the philosopher’s reply:

‘An instant of thought can only be grasped through words. We must think, and for thought we need words. One cannot distinguish the thought from the words that express it.’

This exchange seems to me relevant to the world of marketing and communications. On the one hand, words are critical to our shared understanding of brands. We need to define, articulate and communicate what our brands believe and stand for. But, on the other hand, our industry language seems to be mired in the clichéd and commonplace, in banality and buzzphrases.

Our platform is burning, our fruit is low hanging, our expectations are managed, our diligence is due. Our approach is customer-centric, our strategy is synergistic, our brand is iconic, our tone is authentic. Our essence is passion, our benefit is ease, our mission is freedom, our purpose is to make a difference. Let’s seize the day.

Language should liberate us, but so often it constrains us.

‘A few minutes of silence can last a long time…a whole eternity.’

Franz, Bande a Part

When I played Scrabble as I child I rather liked the idea that you could miss a go and change all your letters. It seemed to suggest that we can always make a fresh start in life, if we are prepared, briefly, to step outside the rat race. I wonder, should some of our brands miss a go and change all their words?

It would be easy to imagine that Jean-Luc Godard’s films are pretentious and worthy. But actually they are thought provoking, life enhancing. As much as they engage in philosophy and morality, they are also joyous, cool and funny. And Godard’s characters are not afraid to dance.

Towards the end of Pierrot Le Fou, Ferdinand, a fugitive from bourgeois society, sums it all up rather nicely:

‘Ten minutes ago I saw death everywhere. Now it’s just the opposite. Look at the sea, the waves, the sky. Life may be sad, but it’s always beautiful!’

No. 95

A Bout de Souffle: Strategic Spontaneity

‘The More One Talks, The Less the Words Mean’: Jean-Luc Godard and the Need to Refresh Our Vocabulary