ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with an analysis of the opening scene of Breathless, which shows how early in the film Godard breaks with the illusion that what we see on screen is the unfolding of an autonomous real situation. The chapter shows how the distinctive approach to popular cinema that Godard developed while making this film employs and adapts techniques of cinema vérité documentary in order to draw upon and heighten the audience awareness of the interconnections between cinema and life. Analysis of the ways in which Godard’s film illuminates the relationship between cinema and life leads into a discussion of the relation between appearances and reality in general, with the relation between cinematic appearances and the conditions responsible for producing those appearances.
