BREATHLESS (1983)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Jim McBride

SCREENWRITER: Jim McBride, L.M. Kit Carson

FILM STARS: Richard Gere, Valérie Kaprisky, Art Metrano, John P. Ryan, Robert Dunn, Lisa Persky, James Hong, Georg Olden, Miguel Pinero, Sunny Ade

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Leonore Fleischer

TYPE: Novelization

PUBLISHER: Dell

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1983

COUNTRY: USA

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1983

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Crime

WORDS: As much as I love the original French version of Breathless (À bout de souffle, lit. ’Out of Breath’) from 1960, and I do, this 1983 version I (and this will be heresy to some) like a little more. Goddard’s original (based on a story by François Truffaut and an uncredited Claude Chabrol) was innovative and influential (one of the films creating the French New Wave in cinema) but this American remake resonates (or, resonated) with me (at the time I even wore a chequered pair of trousers similar to the one Gere wears).

Perhaps because I saw it first in the cinema at the time (I saw the French film in the cinema later at a revival) and discovered Richard Gere (actually I “discovered” him earlier in “American Gigolo” (1981). Gere’s (anti) hero is different to the one played by Jean Paul Belmondo in the original. The earlier protagonist is Michel, a Frenchman who is cool, pensive and obsessed with Humphrey Bogart. Gere in the latter is Jesse Lujack a American Slav looking like Elvis (who is on the soundtrack) and who is kinetic, flamboyant and obsessed with Silver Surfer comics, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the 50s (all good things). He is the loud American as opposed to the (slightly) alienated Frenchman. Both characters are nihilistic though Gere’s character amps up the boorishness of the protagonist and also the obsessive love for the heroine. Both are petty criminals on the fringes of society. Both look to the past for inspiration but the earlier is nostalgic and the latter is punk. Both actors inhabit their roles.

The female lead Valérie Kaprisky in the later film is no Jean Seberg from the first version though in a nice twist, in the French film the American Seberg plays an American in Paris while in the American remake the French Kaprisky plays a Frenchwoman in America.

Director Jim McBride, hasn’t had a large feature film output and despite this and a few others, especially his memorable first film, David Holzman’s Diary (1967), he never quite lived up to his potential. His films are too arty and trashy (yes both) around the edges. What is unusual is his America (especially here) is a melting pot of ethnicities, where their ethnicity has little bearing on events (ie: WASPs do not dominate his American landscape). He is a East Coast product of the 1960s and grew up on French art house and American pop culture.

I haven’t read the novelisation (based on the screenplay by McBride and the equally fascinating L.M. Kit Carson (he starred in David Holzman’s Diary)) so there is no comment here though I will say that Leonore Fleischer is fascinating and she wrote many novelizations under her own name and a variety of pseudonyms tackling most contemporary genres though at home, it seems, in urban settings, especially crime ones.

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