Barnes & Noble

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. Tony Nigro

All Movie Guide

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. Louis Schwartz

Chicago Reader

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. Jonathan Rosenbaum

Product Details

• UPC: 715515026222
• Source: CRITERION
• Region Code: 1
• Presentation: Pan & Scan
• Language: Français
• Time: 1:30:00
• Sales Rank: 1,027

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Essentials Director Series: Jean-Luc Godard Collection

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