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Breathless [1959]
from Optimum Home Entertainment
starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri-Jacques Huet
directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Features:

• Black & White
• PAL

Editorial Review:

Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), an ex-airline steward turned hoodlum, steals a car and heads to Paris. Discovering a gun in the car's glove department, he uses it to shoot and kill a cop who tries to wave him down. He wants to escape to Italy with his American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), but the police are after him, and he is distracted by all the pleasures Paris has to offer.

Story-wise, Jean-Luc Godard's A Bout De Souffle (1960) (aka Breathless) is pretty thin, but as its director always proclaimed, you don't need much in the way of narrative to make a movie. Sometimes a girl and a gun are quite enough. The effortlessly cool and laconic Belmondo mirrors the director's mischief and flamboyance. With his fat cigarette stub perched on his bottom lip, his shades, his felt hat and white socks, he looks like a cross between a left-bank intellectual and an American gumshoe (perhaps his beloved Bogart). With her close-cropped hair and New York Herald Tribune T-shirt, his girlfriend (Jean Seberg) is equally stylish. A Hollywood star (she had appeared in the lead in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan in 1957 when she was still a teenager), the Iowa-born Seberg is turned by Godard into the lithe embodiment of European radical chic.

The film has a spontaneity that studio-bound offerings of the time missed by a mile. Cameraman Raoul Coutard uses natural light and real locations whenever possible. Lots of the pet tricks in the movie--jump cuts, whip pans and improvised tracking shots--have been copied relentlessly by imitators ever since. A Bout De Souffle, though, is unique: anarchic, liberating and hugely stylish, "the best film around now", as its trailer proclaimed. It made Godard, almost overnight, into "the world's most discussed, interviewed and quoted filmmaker". --Geoffrey Macnab

On the DVD: Godard's greatest movie has been lovingly transferred to disc by Optimum, and comes with several extras including trailers and production notes and an old Godard short, Charlotte Et Son Jules, also starring the swaggering, arrogant Belmondo. --Geoffrey Macnab

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• Cinema classic! DVD ok?
  Great film! Saw it again recently. So fresh and alive. So now I want to buy the it on DVD, however I read ( from wikipedia ) that the film has a greenish tinge on the DVD. Can anyone confirm this?

• ahead of its time but still over rated....
  Sorry but ive just watched Breathless twice this week + although i can appreciate its historical importance in using innovative shots,low budgets and "restless" plot - its still comes across as pretentious and slight in content.
  The lead male is HUGELY annoying and would put anyone off what he supposedly represent : young,angry,dispossesd. the character is just a arrogant,selfish crook . The chain smoking and devil may care attitude just strike me a immature + a cliche of what feeble minds consider... more info

• French film creates a style of its own
  I first seen this film at the pictures about 10 years ago. I just found it different to any other film that I had ever seen before. The music the cinematography the charcters they all screamed cool. The antihero who smokes in every single scene they probably couldn't do that now.
  On a technical level this is the first film of the "nouvelle vague" new wave of french cinema it borrows from Bogart and other archtype noir characters but the films is still completley french.

• Style over substance
  Godard's 1959 directing debut was all about style over substance, and the story (to the extent that there was one) is almost incidental. Needless to say, that didn't stop Hollywood from doing a slick remake starring Richard Gere 24 years later. Wholeheartedly recommended.

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