Planting the Seeds of Artistic Subversiveness in À Bout De Souffle: Godard’s Trailblazing Cinematic Language

Abstract

The following article frames a particular case study: Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (1960), referenced in the paper with its American title, Breathless. Foraging through the dense and sophisticated thicket of narrative, visual and textual features, the present study will attempt to untangle the overall intrinsic complexity of Godard’s film, as it exceeds simple commonalities between genre conventions or traditional stylistic approaches.

Keywords

• narration
• characterization
• textual analysis
• language and transcreation
• editing
• visual discontinuities
• jump-cuts
• auteur cinema
• nouvelle vague