We continue our trip Around the World in Twenty Films with a stopover in France, and a look at a couple of crime dramas, told largely from the criminals’ point of view.
In Part One we’re reviewing Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (À bout de souffle). This 1960 film stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. Belmondo is a petty criminal who’s graduated to cold-blooded murder. Seberg is his old girlfriend, in whose apartment he’s hiding. The ending to the film is something that’s been debated for years. Do we solve the mystery? Of course not; who are we? However, we do provide some additional information that either seals the deal…or it further muddies the water. We’ll leave that part to you.
From Breathless we make a ten-year jump to 1970’s Le Cercle Rouge (The Red Circle). No, we don’t know why most people refer to one film by its English title and the other by its French title. Just go with it. This epic-length film, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, stars Alain Delon. He and a host of other big-name French actors carry us through a complicated caper to steal jewelry.
Now, in Breathless the ending was (in our opinion) inevitable, but if you haven’t seen Le Cercle Rouge, it’s probably fair to say that you will be on the edge of your seat up until the ending, because everyone’s motivations are suspect. Also, you should see it before listening to the episode, because by now you should know that we are all about the spoilers.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
We reach the halfway mark with our world tour as we go to Germany. The films we’re screening show different ways that the Germans confront their past. First up is The Lives of Others, a 2006 drama that takes place on the other side of the Berlin wall. Then we move forward two years to review The Baader Meinhof Complex. You may have heard of the Baader Meinhof Phenomenon, which oddly enough is only loosely related to this film.