Their films could be shot quickly and cheaply with this portable and flexible equipment, which encouraged experimentation and improvisation, and generally gave the directors more artistic freedom over their work. .
New Wave directors were different from the "traditional- Hollywood because they were interested in interested in questioning cinema itself, by drawing attention to the conventions used in film-making. In this manner, they attempted to present an alternative to Hollywood, by consciously breaking its conventions, while at the same time paying due respect to what they regarded as good in Hollywood cinema. Godard's "Breathless- set the tone for New Wave by telling a simple story about a relationship in a convention-challenging style with numerous references to previous cinema. In addition to telling a love story, the film can also be seen as an essay about filmmaking.
With Breathless, Godard, at 29, broke from cinematic tradition, creating a film that could be understood in the same way that one understands a book. Godard's manipulation of film reveals insights about the characters and their tight spots the same way an author's words reveal the characters to the reader. In so doing, Godard developed the notion of film auteurship and thus established the dominance of the director over the story.
"Breathless" is really composed of two parallel plots that only intersect at rare moments. Despite its being based on a conventional Hollywood-like, melodramatic script by Francois Truffaut, it is a highly experimental film. To further complicate matters, there are two stories contained within the one narrative of "Breathless. One story is a story of Michel Poiccard, a French gangster who likes American movies; the other story says Michel is making all this up. The parallel plot is the story of Patricia Franchini, an American girl in Paris who is a student at the Sorbonne.
It is Michel's doubled story which, however, makes up the majority of the film's time.
