Terry George: The Promise

Director – Terry George

Writers – Terry George, Robin Swicord

Plot: Set during the last days of the Ottoman Empire, The Promise

follows a love triangle between Michael, a brilliant medical student,

the beautiful and sophisticated Ana, and Chris - a renowned American

journalist based in Paris. – IMDB.com

Cast                                                    Characters

Oscar Isaac                  …                Mikael Boghosian

Charlotte Le Bon        …                  Ana Khesarian

Christian Bale              …                Chris Myers

Daniel Giménez Cacho      …        Reverend Dikran Antreassian

Shohreh  Aghdashloo        …        Marta Boghosian

Marwan Kenzari            ---            Emre Ogan

Angela Sarafyan            …            Maral

Tom Hollander              …              Garin

Numan Acar                  …            Mustafa

Igal Naor                        …            Mesrob

Milene Mayer                …            Yeva

Tamer Hassan                …            Faruk Pasha

Alicia Borrachero          …          Lena

Abel Folk                      …            Harut

Jean Reno                      ---            Admiral Fournet

Thoughts –  The movie starts saying “On the eve of World War I, the

once vast Ottoman Turk Empire was on the brink of collapse. The fate

of the Empire’s Greek, Assyrian, and Armenian minorities lay in the

balance”

We begin in Siroun, Southern Turkey 1914. It is half Turk, half

Armenian. Mikael Boghosian is a man who prepares and sells medicines.

The narrator tells us “For 200 years the  Boghosians made medicines

using formulas handed down from our ancestors. We treated everyone

alike, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor.” Harut, Mikael’s father in

law, gives him 400 gold coins as a dowry. He says he will grow to love

her so it is a marriage for money so he can go to school in

Constantinople to study medicine.

At the Imperial Medical School Mikael begins classes. This is his

dream come true.  Mikael notices and talks to Ana Khesarian who is an

artist. We are introduced to Christopher Myers played by Christian

Bale who sis a Paris based American journalist. They agree the place

is boring where they are drinking and they go to a bar to drink

absinthe.

Ana tells Mikael she’s done sketches for Parisian magazines and

American newspapers. Ana is with Christopher but a love triangle is

brewing. Chris apologies for insulting the Turk and German armies at

the party to Ana.  Turkey enters the war October 29, 1914. Mikael

avoids a military draft when his friend pays off a soldier who enlists

people. That was a close call.  Chris tells Ana it’s not safe for

Armenians right now so he wants to get her an American visa. Mikael’s

uncle recognizes that Ana likes Mikael and that things are not good

between her and Chris. He suggests to Mikael he get divorced and pay

back the dowry of 400 gold coins plus 200 to ease the anger. Mikael

says no he made a promise. Chris witnesses Armenian’s being marched to

their deaths, The Armenian Genocide, and one woman weak is shot. Turks

are assaulting Armenians and setting fire to their shops.

An affair starts with Ana and Mikael. As a journalist Chris wires a

message to New York that Armenians are being murdered. The Turks don’t

like this when they hear him aloud. He is also mad because he knows

Ana cheated on him with Mikael. Emre, a Turk, tries to help his

Armenian friend, Mikael. Mikael tries to bribe someone in the prison

but is tricked and imprisoned himself. Emre’s relative tells him he is

to join the army to restore their family name. Chris looks at his wife

Ana and knows she cheated on him. The Turks are building a railroad

and the Armenians are doing all the manual labor. The Turks are

brutal. They shoot someone if they are injured.

Mikael escapes the work camp. He gets help from some Armenian

peasants. Maral and Mikael get married in an Armenian ceremony. Mikael

is given refuge b his family. He sleeps with Maral. All in all he is

lucky. Chris tells a pastor he wants to record the orphans escaping

for posterity. The pastor agrees to it. Maral thinks she is pregnant

with Mikael’s child. Ana and Mikael reunite at the mission. They cry

seeing each other.

Chris asks how Mikael is going to introduce Ana to his wife, Maral. He

is threatening him. Mikael doesn’t like this. Mikael sees his family

captured by the Turks. The Turks kill a load of people by the river

and leave them there. Among them is Maral and Mikael’s father.

Turks come and find the survivors, Mikael’s mother and a little girl.

A Turk kicks Chris in the testicles and he is emasculated once again.

Chris Myers tells a Turk official, Faruk Pasha, he is reporting on the

war. The man says there is no war here just a civilian relocation.

Chris rips up a confession he gets in prison he is suppose to sign. It

shocks Emre. They find out Emre sent out information about Chris and

he is executed. Marta dies and they bury her under rocks. This was

Mikael’s mother.

Turks start firing canon balls on the mountain where the Armenians are

hiding. They head toward the beach. Admiral Fournet of the French Navy

sends help to the Armenians. They fight alongside the Armenians. Ana

and Mikael kiss and she says she loves him. Chris sees this.  Yeva and

Ana are tossed from the boat evacuating the Armenians. Ana drowns.

Chris finds out and he is devastated. Chris dies while reporting on

the Spanish Civil War.

The movie tells us, “One and a half million, men, women, and children

perished during the Armenian genocide. To this day the Turkish

government refuses to acknowledge this crime.”

Works Cited:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Promise_%282016_film%29

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4776998/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Jean-Luc Godard: Breathless

Director– Jean-Luc Godard

Writer - François Truffaut

Cast                                          Characters

Jean Seburg              …            Patricia Franchini

Jean-Paul Belmondo      …      Michel Poiccard / Laszlo Kovacs

Daniel Boulanger           …      Police Inspector Vital

Henri-Jacques Huet        …      Antonio Berrutti

Roger Hanin                  …       Carl Zubart

Van Doude                    …        Himself

Claude Mansard             …        Claudius Mansard

Plot

A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he reunites with a hip American journalism student and attempts to persuade her to run away with him to Italy. –IMDB.com

Introduction to French New Wave Facts

The French New Wave was consisted of two parts: the Cahiers group of critics-turned-directors (Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and Francois Truffaut) and the “Left Bank” group has often been characterized as taking literature, philosophy, politics, and the possibilities of documentary more seriously than the Cahiers group. They were also more professionally experienced filmmakers, and Varda’s La Pointe Courte (shot and privately premiered in 1954, released in 1956 and edited by Resnais) has been called by some the first New Wave film; it is certainly the precursor, as Ossessione prepared the way for Neorealism. (Mast Kawin 347)

Furthermore “To like Godard for Breathless is perhaps to wish he were another Truffaut. But even in Breathless the unique Godard devices – the logical assault against logic, the sudden and abrupt event, the detachment of the viewer from the illusion of the film – control the work. As Michel drives the stolen car, his lengthy monologue on life and the countryside is addressed directly to us, an artifice that Godard emphasizes with his jump cutting, which destroys – or excitingly charges the visual continuity of time and space. (Mast Kawin 352)

One technique that Godard is famous for is that of Breaking the Fourth Wall. This is seen is his film Band of Outsiders. It is jarring and abrasive and gets your attention. 

Thoughts

The film Breathless begins with Jean-Paul Belmondo looking at a sexy pin-up in a tabloid newspaper. You’ll see him stroke his lips a habit supposedly Humphrey Bogart had. “Breathless uses the famous techniques of the French New Wave: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition Godard uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate “mismatches” between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film’s vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart’s clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio.” (ThePirateBay)

“Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) was a “New Wave” film released in 1960 France and was directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The script was written by Godard and François Truffaut, both of whom were writers for the Cahiers du Cinéma, a journal for cinema.” (Film…And All Its Goodness)

Michel steals a car and is off. He breaks the fourth wall by talking to camera. He says if you don’t like the shore, mountains or city then get stuffed. He aims to the sun with his gun and we hear gunshots. The gunshots are not from the gun itself. As the editing continues as he is driving there is a cut on sound which gets your attention.  The cops chase him and he kills one escaping on foot through a field. When Michel is at a girlfriend’s apartment there is natural lighting and a wall light but it is shot seemingly without key, fill lights and back lighting. This gives it a rawer more individual and auteur look. “A tiny room in the Hotel de Suede was used as the room where Patricia lived. It was so small there was only about eight inches of floor space around the bed. Jean-Luc Godard, Raoul Coutard, and the actors all had to cram into the space, with the focus puller standing on the bed and the script supervisor watching through the door. "It was a relief not to have lights," Coutard later said.” (IMDB.com)

An interesting trivia fact is that “the story is based on the real life criminal, Michel Portail, who Truffaut had collected clippings back in 1952” (IMDB.com) Michel goes to a movie theatre and sees a picture of Humphrey Bogart and strokes his lips the way that Bogart seemingly does. Humphrey Bogart was a symbol of masculine power and Michel tries to emulate that. 

Godard’s status was cemented with the greats as this movie came out despite it’s unorthodox editing. This parodic re-appropriation of a classical thriller (dedicated to Monogram Pictures, the American B-movie production company) turned budgetary constraints to its advantage by using outdoor locations, natural lighting, a hand-held camera and a crew reduced to a minimum to create the impression of a more authentic, if stylized, approach to reality.” (Fotiade 12)

What is basically said in the last citation is that the budgetary constraints were an asset to the film adding forced methods of creativity for Godard to use. These are part of the reasons that this is a landmark film.

On a technical note “Coutard had no difficulties in adapting to Godard’s unconventional methods, and went along with the young director’s suggestion of using hypersensitive film stock (Ilford HPS and Agfa Record) for night shoots, which up until then had been the preserve of still photographers and documentary filmmakers. A different stock (Gervaert 36) was used for day shooting.” (Fotiade 32)

When Michel insists that Patricia sleep with him that night she basically turns him down. In the car there are many jump cuts probably to eliminate boring dialogue between Patricia and Michel as stated by Fotiade. The dolly shots I read were accomplished by a cameraman being pushed on a wheelchair. Creative. He scene in which Patricia and Michel talk in her room has natural lighting which gives the film a documentary type look. It adds realism as well as the outside location shooting. Patricia presumably sleeps with the man giving her articles to write which angers Michel understandably. Michel philosophizes women and what they want and is angry that Patricia doesn’t know if she loves him yet. He asks her if she thinks about death. He says he does all the time.  Fitting since death will await him at the end of the film. She tells him she’s pregnant. Every time he touches her butt she slaps him. Patricia says she wants to know what’s behind his face. Michel says he’s not much of a looker but he is quite the boxer. Jean-Paul Belmondo was a amateur boxer in real life. “The scene establishes an idiosyncratic non-verbal bond between characters that are otherwise constantly plagued by cultural misperceptions and linguistic quid pro quo.” (Fotiade 47)

Michel steals a Ford which he likes. Jean-Luc Godard can be seen spotting Michel and he is the one who informs the police on him. Michel takes the car to a chop shop but they rip him off on the price of the car. “Cutting between dialogue and splicing the shots of only one interlocutor ‘as if it was a single take’ (during Michel’s conversation with Patricia in the car) provides an example of stylistic innovation that helped solve a practical editing problem.” (Fotiade 63) These jump cuts make for a fluid conversation and scene as Michel asks her question and a time lapse is not really detected. 

Jump cut after jump cut of Michel cursing the taxi driver to speed up and pass cars shows his rude side as he now knows police are pursuing him. Antonio Berruti owes him money and he left 5 minutes ago as Michel tries to find him. 

Continuity was a funny thing in the film. “At times Godard’s resentment of classical continuity rules went as far as to exclude Susanne Faye (the continuity girl) from the shooting, which led to glaring inconsistencies in the actors’ costumes, such as Patricia’s sudden change from a short-sleeved striped top to a long-sleeved sailor top in consecutive shots during the bedroom sequence.” (Fotiade 74)

Inspector Vital asks Patricia if she’s seen the man on the front page, Michel. She says no. The guy warns her not to mess with Paris Police. 

“It is worthwhile noting in this context that the American thriller and film noir genre was, generally speaking, a male preserve, with the occasional intervention of leading female characters who acted as temptresses, double agents or objects of desire (if not combinations of such roles), deflecting the protagonist from his course and, in some cases, determining his downfall.” (Fotiade 77) It can be said that the masculine and feminine are always fighting with each other in the film even in seduction. Patricia is chased to the movies where she tries to hide. It is clever that the cinema a form of escapism is physically an escape for Patricia. They steal a Cadillac and search for Antonio to get some money he owes Michel. He meets with him and agrees to call him tomorrow. At the hideout Patricia and Michel stay the night. The next on Michel’s orders she buys some milk and a newspaper. She then calls the police on Michel, the one who gave Patricia his number. His name is Inspector Vital. She tells Michel she doesn’t want to be in love with him. That is why she called the police. Instead of running they both philosophize about love. On the street Antonio throws Michel a gun and the police shoot him. He calls Patricia a louse.

At the end of the movie there is “Patricia impersonating Bogart (a sign of complicity with Michel). (Fotiade 83)

Works Cited

Fotiade, Ramona. A bout de soufflé. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013

Mast, Gerald and Kawin, Bruce. A Short History of the Movies. 2000

Thepiratebay.org

http://shauney.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/2010/12/10/film-analysis-breathless

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053472/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2

Proud, Alexandra. Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless: The revelation of

filmmaking as cinephilia. Edith Cowan University

imdb.com