Synopsis
There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, crackling personalities of rising stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, and anything-goes crime narrative, Jean-Luc Godard’s debut fashioned a simultaneous homage to and critique of the American film genres that influenced and rocked him as a film writer for Cahiers du cinéma. Jazzy, free-form, and sexy, Breathless (À bout de souffle) helped launch the French New Wave and ensured cinema would never be the same.
Cast
| Patricia Franchini | Jean Seberg |
| Michel Poiccard | Jean-Paul Belmondo |
| Inspector Vital | Daniel Boulanger |
| Antonio Berruti | Henri-Jacques Huet |
| Carl Zumbach | Roger Hanin |
| Van Doude | Van Doude |
Credits
| Director | Jean-Luc Godard |
| Screenplay | Jean-Luc Godard |
| Cinematography | Raoul Coutard |
| Producer | Georges de Beauregard |
| Based on an original treatment by | François Truffaut |
| Assistant editor | Pierre Rissient |
| Camera operator | Claude Beausoleil |
| Technical advisor | Claude Chabrol |
| Editing | Cécile Decugis |
| Music | Martial Solal |
Disc Features
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director of photography Raoul Coutard
- Archival interviews with director Jean-Luc Godard, and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Jean-Pierre Melville
- New video interviews with Coutard, assistant director Pierre Rissient, and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker
- New video essays: filmmaker and critic Mark Rappaport’s “Jean Seberg” and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum’s “Breathless as Film Criticism”
- Chambre 12, Hotel de suede, an eighty-minute French documentary about the making of Breathless, with members of the cast and crew
- Charlotte et son Jules, a 1959 short film by Godard, starring Belmondo
- French theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring writings from Godard, film historian Dudley Andrew, Francois Truffaut’s original film treatment, and Godard’s scenario
From the Current
Belmondo in L.A.
Jan 14, 2010The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has bestowed its annual career achievement award on French New Wave icon Jean-Paul Belmondo. The ceremony will be held on Saturday, January 16, and, according to Leonard Klady, awards committee member and Screen International journalist, Belmondo...
“The Face of the French Cinema Has Changed”
by Apr 21, 2009Fifty years ago today . . . Godard wrote this New Wave battle cry for the April 22, 1959, issue of the French journal Arts, on the news of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows being selected to represent France at the Cannes Film Festival (thanks to the machinations...
Bazin Season
by Dec 21, 2008André Bazin has a curious status in intellectual life. He is everywhere admitted as the founding father of film criticism and theory in general. The magazine he created in the 1950s, Cahiers du cinéma, has good claim to be the most influential film magazine ever published. And yet at the...
Breathless Then and Now
by Oct 22, 2007The opening of Breathless is “unprecedented,” in that we never learn what route brought Michel Poiccard to the Vieux Port of Marseille, where he surveys the future from the very edge of France. This first shot strikes a match to touch off an oil fire that will race through the film’s incidents...
Breathless
by Jul 8, 1992Many great movies are classics. A few stand as landmarks. The merest handful—perhaps four or five in a century—deserve to be called revolutions. Breathless belongs unequivocally in the final category. Since its first screening in 1960, Jean-Luc Godard’s astonishing debut has lost none of...
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The Auteurs Forum
Displaying 3 discussion topics.
First high five in cinema history?
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IS IT WORTH IT?
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Kinda disappointed with breathless
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