Nouvelles Femmes: Breathless
September 16, 2026
Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) stomps the accelerator, is Parisian-cool, and casual about the big things (love, living and dying). Speeding ahead like Bogart in those American Noir movies, with the American Patricia (Jean Seberg) sharing his crime spree. She (standing still) gives us a Mona Lisa gaze: all the mysteries.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2026
In one of the cinema’s most iconic strolls, fledgling Parisian gangster Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg) walk towards us on the summertime Champs-Élysées, casually bantering. His tie is loose, his fedora’s pushed back on his head, not hooding his eyes film noir-style; she’s got a cool new look, with short gamine haircut, capri pants, ballet flats. For mid-century culture, Patricia’s look is trailblazing, as is her solo travel to France, not to find a husband but to pursue her writing career. The New Wave films project the youthful need for self-definition, freedom and fun that awoke in the 1960s. Writer-director Godard, well-versed in world literature, art, music and film, from high culture to pulp fiction, defines himself in the words and actions of his characters. He isn’t showing us a picture of a seamlessly unified fiction, he’s living and breathing it into being as we proceed, manifesting his evolving mind, having an intimate conversation with us. And his revolutionary jettisoning of traditional editing continuity keeps us jump-cutting forward at Michel’s speeding pace (“Gotta make tracks, Max!”) Michel has stolen a car and shot a man, but Godard’s self-aware tone keeps things light, almost at a comic distance. Michel and Patricia talk about serious things (she may be pregnant), existential choices, but always with an insouciant flair. Michel reads about his crimes in the newspaper, like a kid wearing a Bogart hat. Patricia seems only half in his life, but she the writer may compose his next chapter. From François Truffaut’s story idea, with flowing, pioneering New Wave camera work by Raoul Coutard.
- Original Language Title: A Bout de Souffle
- Director: Jean-Luc Godard
- Principal Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville
- Country: France
- Year: 1960
- Running Time: 90 min.
- Producer: Georges de Beauregard
- Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard, from a story by François Truffaut
- Cinematographers: Raoul Coutard
- Editors: Lila Herman
- Music: Martial Solal
- Language: French
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- US Distributor: Rialto Pictures