Watch First the French a Bout De

¶ … watch first the French a Bout de Souffle, Luc Godard's film, released in 1960. I decided to pick this particular one from the list because I thought the image of Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in the street made me want to see the film. That image communicated not only eroticism, but also a special connection between the two that I wanted to explore. While watching the French film, I searched the Internet to find out more about the actress playing Patricia, the main female role.

I found her femininity befitting the sensuality of her male counterpart, Paris in the sixties. Next, I then found out that Jean Paul Belondo played his first major role in this film, one of the most successful films of the French New Wave (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000901/bio-ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm ). After watching the French film, I realized that the main male character, his villainy aside, was quintessentially French. He was a young man in love.

He loved life, himself, Patricia, the "New Yorkese," France and the French language. His complexity came from a strong contrast between his two sides: superficiality and profoundness. Michel is best presented, opposite an American girl in Paris: Patricia. The recurring question: "what does that mean?" is central to the main theme: the meaning of life. From this one, there is another theme that appears to be born: the meaning of one's ife vs. The meaning of another's.

Michel kills the policeman without giving it another thought, but when he sees a man on the ground, in the street, after having been hit by a car, he makes the sign of a cross. Having been pleasantly surprised after watching Godard's film, I was looking forward to see what Hollywood came up with as a version, two decades later. The American version had no other choice but to present a quintessentially American male character in a quintessentially American landscape, opposite a foreigner, this time, a French girl.

The setting was befitting: the West coast. Los Angeles in the eighties is one of the most American cityscapes one could think of. Jesse calls himself a "Desperado." He is in love with the freedom a road trip could promise, along with his sweetheart. He is romantic, more so than Michel and cynical, just as Michel, at the same time. As all desperadoes, he makes the audience like him, in spite of the fact that he was a murderer, having purposefully killed an innocent human being.

It is easy to guess that, Michel, Jean Paul Belmondo's character in the French film and Jesse, his American counterpart, are destined to end tragically. They are young, full of life, with no worry in the world, but they also seem detached from the rest of the world, restless and looking from something that seems to escape them.

On one hand, we see Michel driving through the French countryside dreaming of "Milano, Genova, Roma," but admiring the landscape of his native country, talking to himself about its beauties: the see, the mountains, the city. On the other, on his first ride in a stolen Porche, Jesse speeds on the highway, from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, listening to Jerry Lee Lewis, "the killer" and talks to himself about the money, about Monica, the girl of his dreams and about running to Mexico.

They dream about a happy, carefree life, disregarding the price someone has to pay for it. Despite their lack of morality, they make one sympathetic with their meaningless cause. After having shot at the policeman, both Michel and Jesse read the newspaper to find out what has been released about last night and then, wipe their shiny shoes with it in a gesture of supreme indifference.

Monica, the French girl, "school girl," as Richard Gere's character describes her to his friend from the Superior Stamp and Coin Company, is extremely feminine, in a different way. A completely different type of physical features creates an image profoundly erotic, but not necessarily superior to its French version. Different times and different styles present two women who are extremely attractive and speak to the camera in two different ways.

The American version particularly nods to its French inspiration when Jesse drives Monica downtown LA, into a pink convertible, to an appointment she has there. The scene is filmed in the old style with a moving background against a standing car. Another scene, the one where Monica goes up in the elevator with her professor, nods to the history of film, generally.

It reminds one of the way love scenes were filmed in the Hollywood films of the thirties and the forties: the music, the color of the sky in the background, the two protagonists ready.