Astruc + Godard = Breathless

It was quite refreshing recently to read Truffaut’s treatment for Breathless and then to watch the film within the larger context of Astruc’s essay La caméra-stylo.  What became immediately apparent in comparing the treatment to the film is that everything that is interesting, fresh and original in the film originates from the camera itself.  Almost as if channeling Astruc’s ideas, Godard takes a fairly bland treatment and, with his camera, writes something wholly otherwise and cleverly rejects the common practice of effacing the unique qualities inherent to film in order to function merely as a visual means for representing literature.  Breathless still cannot not be approximated by another medium and, because of this uniqueness, demonstrates all the ways that film differs from every other form of art.  By writing with the camera, Godard destroys the insistence on the invisible (editing) and brings the facticity of the form to the foreground.  How do you write a treatment for a film when the main character is the camera-stylo itself? 

 CGT

Note:  This post originally was generated for the Godard Montage Blog.  It can be seen here.