Breathless (1960)

Original title

À bout de souffle

Directed by

Jean-Luc Godard

Genre

drama film, crime film

Country

France

Runtime

1h 27m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.5 of 10 from 2,057 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A wandering criminal on the run in Paris tries to convince his American girlfriend to run away with him. The story follows their tense and spontaneous relationship as he evades the police.

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What happens

Breathless (French: À bout de souffle, lit. 'Out of Breath') is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend Patricia. The film was Godard's first feature-length work and represented Belmondo's breakthrough as an actor. Breathless is an influential example of French New Wave (nouvelle vague) cinema. Along with François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour, both released a year earlier, it brought international attention to new styles of French filmmaking. At the time, Breathless attracted much attention for its bold visual style, which included then unconventional use of jump cuts. Upon its initial release in France, the film attracted over two million viewers. It has since been considered one of the best films ever made, repeatedly appearing in Sight & Sound magazine's decennial polls of filmmakers and critics on the subject. In May 2010, a fully restored version of the film was released in the United States to coincide with the film's 50th anniversary. American film critic of the time, Pauline Kael, called it the most important New Wave film to reach the United States. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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