Editing (3): Alternative Editing Systems
Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless (1959)

The French New Wave
(late 1950s--early 1960s)

Henri Langlois and the Paris Cinematèque
André Bazin and Cahiers du Cinema
From critics to auteurs
Against the "cinema of quality"
Discovery of American genre films
Major figures

François Truffaut
Jean-Luc Godard
Claude Chabrol
Agnes Varda
Jacques Rivette

Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless (1959)

Reinventing film from the ground up
Spontaneity and invention, rather than rigid storytelling
Digressions and suspensions of action
Young actors: Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg
Location shooting, natural light, handheld camera
Basis in American gangster films...
...filled with references to Hollywood genres...
...but everything is deglamorized

Breathless: Experimenting with Film Form

Deliberate violations of continuity editing rules

Jump cuts
Deliberate mismatches
Changes of direction

A film that openly provides us with the self-conscious awareness of being in a film
Michel/Belmondo directly addresses the camera and the audience
Movies and real life: Michel imitating Humphrey Bogart
Film as collage (e.g. press conference at the airport)
Language barrier: French vs. English
The use (abuse? misuse?) of genre conventions

Breathless: Ambiguities and Interpretations

Cinematic self-consciousness and POV
The question of "realism": the reality of the story vs. the reality of the film

Shot in real locations, with natural lighting
The actors keep us aware of their reality as actors

How do we feel about Michel and Patricia? Do we identify with either one of them?
What sense do we make of their relationship? How is this sense conveyed to us?
How do we interpret the ending of the film?

Why does Patricia betray Michel?
Why does Michel not try to escape?
Death scene: Michel making faces
"Dégueulasse"

Alternatives to Continuity Editing

Eisenstein's montage style
[example: Battleship Potemkin]
Distancing via montage, jump cuts, direct audience address, and other alienation effects
[example: Breathless]
Disjunctive editing, or visible editing
[example: Luis Bunuel, Un chien andalou (Andalusian Dog), 1929]

Calls attention to the editing (instead of making it smooth or "invisible")
Disorients, disturbs, or viscerally affects viewers

Other "classical" systems: Yasujiro Ozu's 360-degree system
[example: Tokyo Story, 1953)

Uniformity of space
Graphic matching of close-ups of faces
Emphasizes circular patterns in space (sitting around the table)

Continuity Editing: A Quick Review

Analysis of an action: breaking it down into a cause-and-effect sequence
Axis of action and 180-degree rule
Establishing shot -- shot-reverse shot patterns -- re-establishing shot
Eyeline matches, matches on action
Spatial, graphic, and rhythmic continuity
30-degree rule
Parallel editing; cross-cutting; POV cutting; head-on & tail-on shots
Shifting the axis of action
The Kuleshov Effect