When the “young Turks” from the journal Cahiers du Cinema began making films in the late fifties, they revolutionised cinema by celebrating the look and attitudes of American pop-culture (B-movies, rock and roll) while infusing their own films with the uncertainties of a then distinctly European intellectual scrutiny. In “Breathless” a young hood kills a cop and goes on the run in Paris, hiding at his girlfriend’s flat until she betrays him. That’s life. Kiss-kiss, bang-bang. Playful, cool, name-dropping and audacious the film is true to its title, furiously exploring the possibilities of cinema while acknowledging its aesthetic debt to the low-budget films of Hollywood’s B-directors. Godard’s film remains the most influential of the French New Wave, and as the decade was to progress, Vietnam, Algiers and Maoism were to demand of him a more intellectually dense cinema. But in “Breathless” he is still the cheeky precocious brat, thumbing his nose at the world and inventing a new kind of film. From an original treatment by Francois Trauffaut, and with Claude Charbrol as artist and technical adviser. With Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.
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Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
316751
Languages
English
French
French
Audience classification
PG
Subject categories
Drama → New wave films → New wave films - France
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Black and White
Holdings
DVD; Access Print (Section 1)