Breathless (1960) Movie Overview

Breathless (French: À bout de souffle; literally “at breath’s end”) is a 1960 French drama film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Godard’s first feature-length film is among the inaugural films of the French New Wave. It derived from a scenario by fellow New Wave director, François Truffaut, and the film was released the year after Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Together the three films brought international acclaim to the nouvelle vague. At the time, Breathless attracted much attention for its bold visual style and the innovative editing use of jump cuts. Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a young thug who models himself on the film persona of Humphrey Bogart. After stealing a car in Marseille, Michel shoots a policeman who has followed him onto a country road. Penniless and on the run from the police, he turns to his American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), a student and aspiring journalist, who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the streets of Paris. The ambivalent Patricia unwittingly hides him while they dally in her apartment as he simultaneously tries to seduce her and call in a loan to fund their escape to Italy. At one point, Patricia says… Source

• Breathless Movie Details
• Director: Jean-Luc Godard
• Tagline: The film that was banned for 4 years. Why..? (original Finnish poster tagline)
• Country: France
• Run Time: 90 min
• Genre: Crime , Drama , Romance , Thriller

• Cast Overview
• Jean-Paul Belmondo as Michel Poiccard
• Jean Seberg as Patricia Franchini
• Daniel Boulanger as Police Inspector Vital
• Jean-Pierre Melville as Parvulesco
• Henri-Jacques Huet as Antonio Berrutti
• Van Doude as Himself

Breathless Movie Review from New York Times

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 Mich… Source

Breathless Movie Details from Imdb

Michel Poiccard, an irresponsible sociopath and small-time thief, steals a car and impulsively murders the motorcycle policeman who pursues him. Now wanted by the authorities, he renews his relationship with Patricia Franchini, a hip American girl studying journalism at the Sorbonne, whom he had met in Nice a few weeks earlier. Before leaving Paris… Source

Breathless (1960) from YouTube