05. The Jump Cuts in A Bout De Souffle (1959)
Classically, its totally un-cinematic: the camera follows the back of heads as they drive around Paris. Sporadically and jerkily cutting between the locations they drive around,
A Bout de Souffle appears to be suffering from a damaged print at this point. However, in reality its director
Jean-Luc Godards genius working at drawing viewers attention to the very process of filmmaking itself. The unconventional editing technique was dubbed the jump cut and became a staple of the French New Wave cinema Godard was so influential within. It has since gone on to become a technique adopted by Hollywood and was frequently used by Tarantino in his Grindhouse entry, Death Proof (2007). Used to distract audiences from the narrative, Godard employed the jump cut as a device to make the editing technique as much a part of the viewing process as the on screen action. Where most directors would try to edit films seamlessly to avoid attention to the process, Godard saw it as an integral element of filmmaking and something that should be at the forefront of an audiences attention something he certainly achieved in this scene of A Bout de Souffle! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KUVwKp6MDI