Just a Bit "Breathless" After a Fabulous Weekend

Bienvenidos.

Last weekend was, as promised, SPECTACULAR.  It included the following:

--Funnel cakes, chicken-on-stick/-in-a-sack, and chocolate malts;

--Meals at some of my favorite brimming-with-local-Charm restaurants, including dinner with my newly-gigantified sorority family; 

Restaurant #1!

Restaurant #2!

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--Getting sunburned (which, ignoring the accompanying increase in my risk for skin cancer, is GOOD because it means I was outside in the sun which was actually bright enough to burn me);

--Terrifying, unnaturally-colored “Joose”;

--Grand tours of a newly-renovated building on campus, as well as tours of other campus facilities (apparently our university recently got really excited about updating bathrooms??);

Our beautiful campus...

...now with weird, giant Ikea womb lanterns.

--Four words: Dinosaur themed beer garden;

Jealy?

--Getting yelled at both nights for being too noisy in our hotel room for relatively innocent reasons, for example: on Saturday someone knocked on our door to ask my grandpa-style pajamas-wearing darling friend if we could “party somewhere else”.  We were watching PBS in the dark and brushing our teeth for bed;

--And finally: three days with some of my absolute most favorite ladies and men, ever.

<333333333 again!

It was a much-needed and thoroughly enjoyed weekend extravaganza.

And now, back to normal grad student life.  The semester is nearing its end, which means I’ve got a final or two, not to mention increasing guilt at not yet completing my master’s thesis (and dissertation) proposal(s).  However, I will have more than my usual allotment of free time over the next week or two, and am hoping to make some much-needed progress.  We’ll see how that goes.

In film news: Continuing the Jean-Paul Belmondo spree I started in my last post, I recently forced boyfriend to watch “Au Bout de Souffle” (aka “Breathless) (1960) with me.  It’s one of my favorites (after “Hedwig”, obvi) for many reasons, not the least of which because it’s heralded as (one of) the first film(s) of the French New Wave, AND it co-stars the beautiful, lovely Jean Seberg.

Much like with our couples’ screening of “Hedwig”, I had held off on making boyfriend watch “Breathless” but finally decided it was time.  However, while my deep emotional investment in both “Hedwig” and my relationship motivated the former movie viewing, my decision to finally show him “Breathless” was a little bit different.  In short (ha), it was my concluding argument in my effort to get his buy-in in cutting my hair… somewhat drastically.

When she filmed “Breathless,” Seberg had somewhat recently wrapped her role in “Saint Joan” (1957).  As a part of her leading role as Joan of Arc, Seberg had her head shaved.  Thus, the hairstyle she sported in “Breathless” represented an early stage in her hair growing back.  In spite of this cut fitting in nicely with the then-at its peak mod aesthetic, judging by the other women in the film, it seems Seberg’s hairstyle made her stand out.  And yet, with hair that could border dangerously on dumpy or masculine on another woman, she is simply luminous in this film.

I initially had the idea to try chopping off my hair in a similar fashion when I first saw this movie as a sophomore in college.  I thought Seberg looked so lovely, and in some way I identified with the young American woman in Paris she was and who I longed to be.  However, I lacked the courage, even as I spent the following spring abroad in the city with which I was so desperately in love.  Fast forward a few years, and here I am, finally having drummed up the steely conviction to just go through with it already.

Now that it’s done, it’s funny how quick people are to link my decision to more well-known celebrities. Most assume I was inspired by Emma Watson (which isn’t too far off base, given my recent love affair with the Harry Potter movies).  Some have posited slightly less recent influences, like Mia Farrow or Jamie Lee Curtis.  No one has really known of the French movie to which my hewn hair is a tiny, humble homage.  Nevertheless, it is unequivocally for "Breathless," and for Jean.

I by no means wish to downplay the incredible importance of this film by relating it to my by-comparison-trivial choice of hair style.  My deep-seated love of this movie comes from its exhilarating freshness, its evident excitement for and love of cinema, its audacity, its embodiment of the spirit of the movement that followed it.  During the Nazi occupation of Paris, Allied films were banned from the city’s theaters.  With the end of the war, all of the banned Allied films burst onto Paris’s screens, finally ending the notoriously cinephilic city’s film fast.  It was in this era of voracious movie consumption that the directors of the New Wave came of age.  Jean-Luc Godard and a number of his cohort of New Wave directors got their start in post-World War II France as film critics.  Godard was a notoriously exacting critic, writing for the renowned film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.  And then, in a move of breathtaking boldness, he began to make movies.

The French New Wave was partly made possible by recent innovations in the technology of filmmaking which made it possible to make movies in the real world.  Cameras were small enough to be manipulated on the streets of Paris, and sound equipment could pick up the true sounds of the city.  This freed filmmakers from the expense of shooting on sound stage outfitted with elaborate sets, opening the previously inaccessible artform to a broader contingent of artists who were newly enabled to film in the real world.  In a class I took on this era of cinema, I learned that the stunning shots taken on the Champs Élysées in “Breathless” were achieved by disguising a camera as a stack of parcels on a dolly and just... rolling it down the famous boulevard.  In the longest sequence in the movie, Belmondo and Seberg’s dialogue is occasionally drowned out by screaming sirens... because that’s what that neighborhood in Paris actually sounded like that day... because the scene takes place in an actual Parisian apartment.  We take these kinds of innovations for granted today, but at the time they were revolutionary.  Suddenly, film could be about and take place in the world as it really was in a way that had never previously been possible.  It is this thrill of new horizons that makes the New Wave so delightful to me.

Godard, as one of the movement’s forefathers, is a particularly imposing figure.  He continues to make movies which are increasingly challenging, sometimes bordering on incomprehensible, in what feels like an almost hostile indifference to the comfort of his audience.  More than any viewer or reviewer, his films are for the love of film itself.  I don’t pretend to always understand what the hell he’s doing, but there’s something in his continued bravado I find absolutely intoxicating.  If his recent behavior is any indication, the guy is far from losing the (dare I say incredibly, deliciously French?) devil-may-care fearlessness that helped launch a visionary new approach to cinema.

I love him.

So.  “Breathless”.  If you haven’t, may I suggest you see it?  You won’t be sorry.

‘Til next time.

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