Breathless [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard

Overview

The first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and one of the seminal films of the French New Wave, Breathless is story of the love between Michel Poiccard, a small-time hood wanted for killing a cop, and Patricia Franchini, an American who sells the International Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as Michel hides out from a dragnet. 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. When Breathless was first released, audiences and critics responded to the burst of energy it gave the French cinema; it won numerous international awards and became an unexpected box-office sensation.

Product Details

Release Date:	11/15/2016
UPC:	0715515190015
Original Release:	1960
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:30:00
Sales rank:	9,963

Special Features

Archival interviews with director Jean-Luc Goddard and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Jean-Pierre Melville; Interviews from 2007 with Coutard, assistant director Pierre Rissient, and filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker; Two video essays: filmmaker Mark Rappaport's Jean Seberg and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Breathless" as Criticism; Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suède, an eighty-minute 1993 French documentary about the making of Breathless, featuring members of the cast and crew; Charlotte et son Jules, a 1959 short film by Godard featuring Belmondo ; Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jean-Paul Belmondo	Michel Poiccard
Jean Seberg	Patricia Franchini
Daniel Boulanger	l'inspecteur Vital
Jean-Pierre Melville	Parvulesco
Liliane Robin	Minouche
Van Doude	Journalist
Claude Mansard	Used-Car Dealer
Michel Fabre	Plainclothesman
Jean Domarchi	Drunk
Henri-Jacques Huet	Antonio Berrutti
Jean-Luc Godard	Actor
Richard Balducci	Tolmatchoff
Roger Hanin	Carl Zombach
Jean-Louis Richard	Journalist
Francois Moreuil	Cameraman
Philippe de Broca	Actor
Liliane Dreyfus	Liliane
André S. Labarthe	un journaliste
Jean Douchet	un journaliste
Jacques Lourcelles	Actor
Gérard Brach	un photographe
Raymond Huntley	un journaliste
Liliane David	Minouche

Technical Credits

Jean-Luc Godard

François Truffaut

Claude Chabrol

Jean-Luc Godard	Director,Screenwriter
Georges de Beauregard	Producer
François Truffaut	Screenwriter
Claude Chabrol	Screenwriter
Jacques Maumont	Sound Effects

Editorial Reviews

Of the films to emerge from France's New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard's feature debut Breathless (1960) is a touchstone. The thin plot plays like a existentialist crime comedy: In bohemian Paris, an ultra-cool lay-about hood (Jean-Paul Belmondo) kills a cop and lams it with an American student (Jean Seberg) -- mostly in her bedroom -- trying to get money and skip town. But simplicity of story gives way to complexity of forms, and, a cinephile to a tee, Godard makes audiences experience film as if the medium had just been invented -- with reinvention being the actual result. There is one dissolve, one iris-in and -out, and erratic jump cutting of Raoul Coutard's crisp, hand-held cinematography, all collaged in a way that makes cinema seem new and improved. This despite familiarities like Belmondo's Bogie lip-rubbing, his character's alias, Laszlo Kovacs, an appearance by director Jean-Pierre Melville, numerous genre tropes, and the shameless quoting of films by Roberto Rossellini, Sam Fuller, and more. An iconoclast on celluloid, Breathless is hip, entertaining, and oh-so-French. It is rightly credited as changing the way we watch movies, and its audacity and style continue to influence filmmakers and amaze audiences worldwide.

Barnes & Noble - Tony Nigro

A loving pastiche of film noir yet an exuberant slap in the face of Hollywood convention, A bout de souffle is a movie landmark that wowed early 1960s audiences with its ultra-cool swagger, amoral outlook, and energetic style. Adopting a loose and shaggy narrative structure, the film follows Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a two-bit thug who models himself on Humphrey Bogart, steals from unsuspecting lovers, and, like the protagonist in Albert Camus's The Stranger, kills for no apparent reason, as he chases after debts, commits larceny, and tries to bed Patricia (Jean Seberg). Shot with hand-held cameras in natural light, the film has the gritty, documentary-like feel of such Italian Neo-Realist classics as The Bicycle Thief and Rome Open City, yet its visual style also breaks every cinematic rule in the book: characters and extras stare directly into the camera, edits occur in mid-shot, and the camera seems willfully restless. In the process, director Jean-Luc Godard gleefully breaks the illusion of reality, always reminding the audience that it is watching a movie. Ever the film buff, Godard packs this film with allusions drawn equally from American pop culture and high art: Nicholas Ray is referenced alongside Dylan Thomas, a 1956 Thunderbird Coupe alongside William Faulkner's Wild Palms. Godard's iconoclastic style, coupled with his constant referencing, might give the impression that the film is a vast inside joke, were it not tempered with a deep existential pathos for its characters. During the famous bedroom sequence, we witness Michel and Patricia, two thoroughly unlikable figures, try and ultimately fail to forge some sort of bond; they are too involved in their worlds to connect. François Truffaut once remarked, "There is the cinema before Godard and the cinema after Godard." A bout de souffle is the masterpiece that launched Godard's career and, in so doing, changed the face of cinema.

All Movie Guide - Jonathan Crow

Jean-Paul Sartre declared this a masterpiece at an early Paris screening, and there's certainly no doubt that this is the quintessential existentialist movie in style as well as attitude.... In short, mandatory viewing.

Chicago Reader - Jonathan Rosenbaum