184. BREATHLESS, 1960
- Jay Jacobson
- 7 hours ago
- 19 min read
The electrifying trailblazer that revolutionized cinema
Only a handful of films have reshaped the course of cinema, and “Breathless” is one of them. Exploding onto screens like cinematic dynamite, it shattered countless filmmaking conventions with an impact so profound, it transformed movies — inspiring directors around the world to see and make films in entirely new ways. Dripping with style and energy, it remains modern and timeless after more than sixty-five years, and in recent years, the BBC named it the 11th Greatest Foreign-Language Film of All-Time and Cahiers du Cinéma declared it the 65th Greatest Film of All-Time. For anyone interested in the art or history of cinema — or if you simply want to watch a mesmerizing film, “Breathless” is an absolute must.
The French film “Breathless” (“À Bout de Souffle” in French) is often regarded as a crime drama, but I’ve always thought of it as a love story, for it’s about a guy who’s in love with a girl, and he just happens to be a criminal. Set in France, mostly Paris, the guy is “Michel Poiccard”, a young thief who steals cars and money and is not afraid to commit murder if needed. The girl is an American in Paris, “Patricia Franchini”, an aspiring journalist who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the city’s streets.
The two had spent several nights together and “Michel” has fallen hard for her, desperate to sleep with her again, and longing for her to go with him to Rome. But “Patricia", unaware that he’s a wanted criminal, is still trying to figure out if she’s in love with him. The film follows them, together and apart, against the backdrop of a police hunt for “Michel”. As intriguing as the story is, what makes “Breathless” truly electrifying is the daring way it’s constructed.
Using unconventional editing, framing, sound, and more, a movie like “Breathless” had never been seen before. It was the apex and defining film from a game-changing cinematic movement known as Nouvelle Vague, or the French New Wave. Because of the film’s immense and lasting influence on global cinema, we’ve grown accustomed to its many (what were then) groundbreaking film techniques and storytelling methods.
To fully grasp the massive impact of “Breathless”, it helps to place it in the context of its time. France had seen rapid social and cultural transformations after World War II with prosperity, modernization, and a shifting of ideas about society and artistic expression by the younger generation. In fact, the term Nouvelle Vague (which I’ll call New Wave) was first coined in 1958 — not to describe films, but to capture the spirit of a new generation of French youth.
Ever since the Lumière brothers became the first in history to project a moving picture to a paying audience in Paris in 1895, cinema has been central to French culture. In the 1950s, a new generation of cinephile intellectuals began writing for Cahiers du Cinéma — among them Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette. By decade’s end, these passionate writers were denouncing mainstream French cinema and its so-called “cinema of quality” (the polished, conventional, literary films that dominated the postwar era) as being creativity rigid, stale, out of touch, and empty.
They praised American filmmakers like John Ford, Nicholas Ray, Alfred Hitchcock, and Howard Hawks, were inspired by the realism and power of postwar Italian neorealism cinema (see my post on “Bicycle Thieves”), and were excited by innovative documentaries and cinéma vérité (from directors like Jean Rouch). Above all, they believed a director should be a film's true author, with full creative control, making films that reflected their own personal style and vision (which became known as the Auteur Theory).
When the French government passed a 1959 law funding first-time directors, these five writers seized the moment — helping each other secure financing, casts, and crews, often collaborating on scripts. Their mission was to escape the stodgy formulas of big-budget, mainstream French cinema and explore more realistic, personal, and expressive forms of storytelling. Though each director’s style was distinct, they shared a bold desire to reinvent the medium. Together, they infused cinema with a vibrantly fresh, youthful energy that became known as the French New Wave.
Many other French directors were also making films during this period (over a hundred debuted between 1958 and 1963 alone) who challenged cinematic norms to varying degrees. As a result, the term New Wave came to include a broad range of filmmakers, including Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Jacques Demy, Louis Malle, Marguerite Duras, and Roger Vadim. Even so, the five Cahiers du Cinéma directors, united by a shared and clearly stated vision, are generally regarded as the movement’s core.
Of the five, Claude Chabrol was the first to release features — 1958’s “Le Beau Serge”, and 1959’s “Les Cousins”. Both earned critical attention and festival honors. Also in 1959 came François Truffaut’s landmark “The 400 Blows”, which won international acclaim and gave the world its first powerful taste of the French New Wave. If “The 400 Blows” shook the foundations of conventional filmmaking, Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless”, released shortly after, shattered them to pieces. The most daring and avant-garde of the group, Godard delivered the boldest reimagining of what cinema could be.
The opening sequence is a perfect example. “Breathless” has no credits (only a dedication to Monogram Pictures and the film’s title) before bursting to life with jazzy music and “Michel’s” self-directed narration: “After all, I’m an asshole. After all, if it has to be done, it has to be done”. We see shots of him in a fedora, cigarette dangling, glancing around, intercut with a woman watching and nodding, “Michel” returning her look, a couple parking and exiting their car, the woman trailing them and signaling to “Michel", the Marseille port, and finally, “Michel” hot-wiring a car. Sounds like nothing earth-shattering, right?
To try and grasp how audacious this looked to 1960 audiences, one must remember that up until then, films in France, Hollywood, and beyond were mostly shot on studio sets with mounted cameras and polished lighting. Stories unfolded in logical, orderly ways that guided viewers step by step through the action.
In this opening, there are no establishing shots to orient us to place or the spatial relationship between characters (we don’t even know where we are until the brief shot of the port). The narration is introspective and cryptic (we never truly know what he’s talking about), and we barely get a clear look at “Michel” (his eyes mostly hidden by his hat or shadows). The editing was also divergent (one moment “Michel’s” standing, the next he’s under the hood of a car). Already, “Breathless” was boldly revolutionary.
But it hardly stops there. “Breathless'” originality could fill a book. Here, I’ll focus on a few of its boldest, most influential innovations, which, again, may seem familiar but were considered avant-garde at the time. Many of these elements had appeared in earlier films, but the electric way Godard used them to shape an entire film and tell a story made “Breathless” pioneering. His success at breaking so many cinematic conventions sparked a realization in global filmmakers that anything was possible in making movies. Paradoxically, because the film had such a mammoth influence on cinema, the very reason it feels familiar today can be traced back to itself.
One defining characteristic was location shooting. Like the other Cahiers directors, Godard aimed to heighten realism, and “Breathless” (like nearly all early New Wave films) was low-budget, making location shooting both practical and effective. Shot entirely on location, Godard masterfully fuses the narrative with a documentary-like authenticity, creating an artificial realism — as if the characters had been dropped into real life. Streets are actual streets, coffee shops are coffee shops, and apartments were real apartments. Passersby occasionally glance at the actors or the camera, adding a spontaneous, unpredictable energy. This guerrilla-style filmmaking approach gives the film a captivating magic.
“Breathless” also broke with tradition by being filmed with a handheld camera. Not only did it save time and money, but it also allowed the camera to freely follow actors through rooms, down city streets, and in tight spaces. A remarkable example is the scene when “Michel” visits a travel agency to get money from “Mr. Tolmachoff”. With one continuous two minute and forty second shot, the camera moves with “Michel” as he approaches the building’s reception desk, walks to “Tolmachoff’s” counter, down hallways to another desk, and back for a phone call before leaving the building. The effect is so fluid that we feel as if we’re walking through the space with him.
One obstacle the handheld camera presented was its noise and inability to record synchronized sound. So all audio (including dialogue) was added later in post-production. The trade-off was worth it — not having cables made shooting faster, and the camera could move freely anywhere. It also enabled Godard to feed lines and stage directions to his actors during filming, which he did.
Such a free camera gave the film an edgy, intimate energy, most notably in its longest and most famous scene, the twenty three minute bedroom sequence between “Michel” and “Patricia". Filmed in a tiny apartment bedroom and bathroom, the camera’s close proximity pulls us straight into their private world, making us feel like silent observers squeezed into the rooms beside them.
That scene also highlights another aspect of what made Godard and “Breathless” so trailblazing — how he lingers on trivial, yet very human moments that would serve no purpose in a traditional film. We listen to their small talk, watch them play silly games like having a staring contest, or how he tilts the camera up to a drawing on the wall by Pablo Picasso for no apparent reason and then back down to “Michel”. It may sound tedious when described, but it's truly mesmerizing to watch.
Another bold move was its strikingly intimate, then–avant-garde camerawork, often capturing characters from the side or behind, or framing them in daringly unexpected ways (like the lingering shot of “Michel’s” hand caressing “Patricia’s” skin as they talk), or close-ups cutting off parts of faces. These choices give their relationship an aliveness and sensuality. It’s easy to forget how radical these visuals once were since they’ve been endlessly imitated in films, television, commercials, and music videos ever since.
Godard also defied convention by having his actors break the fourth wall, directly addressing the audience, drawing us into the story, blurring the line between film and reality. Both “Michel” and “Patricia” do it, most shockingly when “Michel” is driving the car at the beginning, praising the wonders of France before he suddenly turns to the camera and says, “If you don’t like the city… go fuck yourselves”. That’s still fearlessly subversive, if you ask me.
Through they are many other groundbreaking aspect of “Breathless”, I’ll highlight just one more — its use of jump cuts. Any film student (as I was) has probably been told “never use jump cuts”. Yet “Breathless” overflows with them, from the subtle ones in the opening port scene to the blatant cuts in the restaurant as "Patricia’s" boss talks about wanting to sleep with a girl. The rapid cuts make her boss seem superficial and unexpectedly amusing. Delicately done or abrupt, the jump cuts color emotion, and give “Breathless” a distinct, vibrant energy.
The first cut of “Breathless” ran three hours, so Godard and his editor cut whatever they found boring (even if it was in the middle of a scene, shot, or line of dialogue), removing about ninety minutes. Out-of-the-box creative decisions like this yielded compelling results, and made Godard one of the most important and influential directors in cinema history.
Born in Paris to a wealthy family, Jean-Luc Godard grew up along the French-Swiss border with an early love of literature. He enrolled at the University of Paris to study anthropology but never attended classes, instead spending his time in film clubs — most notably the Cinémathèque Française, a film archive that regularly screened classics. He became especially enamored with the Warner Brothers gangster films of the 1930s. It's then when Godard met Truffaut, Chabrol, and other like-minded cinephiles. Godard began writing film criticism under the pseudonym Hans Lucas for La Gazette du Cinéma in 1950 (which he helped cofound), and joined Cahiers du Cinéma the following year. Around the same time, he started making short films, releasing his first, “Une Femme Coquette” (“A Coquettish Woman”) in 1955. When his parents stopped giving him financial support, he resorted to stealing money from family and employers to fund his moviegoing and movie making, sometimes using the money to help friends make films as well. In 1952, he was caught and jailed for theft, later transferred to a mental hospital to serve out a reduced sentence.
Eager to make his first feature, Godard turned to a treatment by Truffaut loosely inspired by a newspaper story about a car thief and his American girlfriend. “The 400 Blows” had just made Truffaut a celebrated director, and his name helped Godard secure funding for what became “Breathless”. Pressed for time, Godard shot without a script, spontaneously writing dialogue the night before — or even the morning of filming day, handing it to actors on scraps of paper just before the camera's rolled. He drew from the newspaper article, his own life (like “Michel” stealing money from his girlfriend), and his love of film, art, and literature, referencing figures such as Humphrey Bogart, William Faulkner, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Philosophical by nature, Godard's characters casually ponder existential questions, revealing their sense of alienation and search for meaning (such as “Michel’s” questioning “Do you ever think about death? I do, all the time” or “Patricia’s” nonchalant, “I don’t know if I’m unhappy because I’m not free, or if I’m not free because I’m unhappy”).
Though it initially bewildered many, “Breathless” earned widespread critical acclaim and became a major international box-office success. Godard received Germany’s Silver Berlin Bear for Best Director, while the film won France’s Jean Vigo Prize, the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Award, and Italy’s Golden Cup, among other accolades. It quickly became the defining film of the French New Wave and established Godard as a world-renowned director.
Godard makes a cameo appearance in “Breathless” when “Michel” is waiting in the car as “Patricia” buys a new dress. Godard's the man with a newspaper smoking a pipe who informs the police that "Michel" is in the car.
Over his long and wildly prolific career, Jean-Luc Godard made more than 130 films (including shorts and TV projects) — forty-five of them full-length features (including seven documentaries). He explored nearly every genre, from comedy and sci-fi to musical, yet his work was always unmistakably personal, reflecting his philosophical bent, rebellious streak, and deep love of movies. His French New Wave era stretched from “Breathless” through 1967’s “Weekend”, directing one or two films a year, including many of his most acclaimed, like “Vivre sa vie”, “Le Mépris” (“Contempt”), “Bande à part” ("Band of Outsiders”), “Alphaville”, “Pierrot le Fou”, and “Masculin Féminin”. Inspired by the political unrest that erupted in France in May 1968, Godard turned away from mainstream cinema and dove headfirst into politically charged, experimental filmmaking. He took on capitalism, war, and social inequality, often through a Marxist lens, some of which were quite controversial. Between 1968 and 1973, he teamed up with Jean-Pierre Gorin on five films steeped in Maoist ideas (Godard later admitted his disillusionment with those beliefs). Notable works from this period include “Tout Va Bien”, starring Jane Fonda, and the documentary “Letter to Jane”, which analyzes a photo of Fonda with the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War.
By the 1980s, Godard had returned to more mainstream storytelling, though still with his own idiosyncratic style, mixing personal reflection with aesthetic experimentation. His most ambitious later work was the monumental eight-part documentary series “Histoire(s) du cinéma”, which explored the history of film as an art form. Other notable later works include "Adieu au langage" ("Goodbye to Language"),"Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro" ("Germany Year 90 Nine Zero"), "Notre musique" ("Our Music"), and "Éloge de l'amour" ("In Praise of Love”). He won about 50 international awards, including two Honorary César Awards for his body of work, the European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and an Honorary Academy Award "for passion. For confrontation. For a new kind of cinema". Famous for his sharp opinions and feuds, Godard had a fallout with Truffaut, and was accused at various times of sexism and antisemitism. When casting "Breathless", Godard saw Danish model and actress Anna Karina in a commercial and offered her a small part, which she refused. But she starred in his next film, "Le Petit Soldat" ("The Little Soldier”), shot in 1960 but released in 1963 due to censorship. The two married in 1961 and Karina appeared in eight of Godard’s films, becoming one of the icons of the New Wave. They divorced in 1967.
Goddard married twice more, to actress Anne Wiazemsky (who appeared in four Godard films), and sometime collaborator, filmmaker Anne-Marie Miéville. Tired of living, in 2022 Jean-Luc Godard sought assisted suicide in Switzerland and died at the age of 91. Godard’s films rarely found mainstream audiences, yet his influence on modern filmmaking is impossible to overstate. More than anyone else, he showed the world there’s a different way to make movies.
Godard wasn’t the only star to emerge from “Breathless” — so did Jean-Paul Belmondo, who plays “Michel Poiccard”, a hopelessly in love small-time gangster. You’d expect to despise a guy who openly calls himself an asshole, steals without remorse, and says bad things about women, but in Belmondo’s hands, you don’t. Despite his flaws, he exudes an infectious charm and charisma that can’t be ignored. You see it in his playful expressiveness in the car scene when he talks to us, and most memorably in the bedroom scene with “Patricia” where he hides under the covers, makes faces, and teases her not to smile. Yet beneath the bravado, Belmondo reveals flashes of “Michel’s” vulnerability — as when he gazes at a photo of his idol, Humphrey Bogart, trying to mimic Bogie’s tough-guy pose while showing a quiet yearning to be like him. “Michel” is a restless soul, always chasing something — sex, money, "Patricia’s" love, escape to Rome. His commanding presence, effortless magnetism, and cool demeanor in “Breathless” made Belmondo an international sensation, fast tracking him to becoming a cinema icon.
Jean-Paul Belmondo wanted to be a professional boxer until he realized the physical sacrifices he’d have make to be champion. So he opted for his second love, acting. He took classes, had a gift for comedy, and began in theater before appearing in movies. Godard saw him onstage and, impressed by his physicality, cast Belmondo in his 1958 short "Charlotte et son Jules". The short was seen by fellow Cahiers director Claude Chabrol, who cast Belmondo as a lead in his 1959 feature "À double tour" ("Web of Passion") as a character named "Laszlo Kovacs" (the alias “Michel” uses in "Breathless"). Next came “Breathless” and stardom. Belmondo worked again with Godard in "Une femme est une femme" and "Pierrot le fou", and became the face of New Wave cinema. Concurrently, Belmondo also starred in mainstream commercial movies with enormous success there too. In the early 1970s, he launched his own production company to develop his own films, and had one box-office hit after another, arguably becoming France’s biggest and most beloved movie star. Many of his mainstream films never reached U.S. audiences, which limited his fame in America, but he remained a towering figure across Europe. You can read more about the life and career of this true cinema legend in my post on “Two Women”. Be sure to check it out.
Opposite Belmondo stars Jean Seberg as “Patricia Franchini", an American student and writer in Paris searching for direction. Seberg beautifully portrays her as calm and composed on the surface, yet quietly restless beneath. In her first scene, selling newspapers on the Champs-Élysées beside “Michel", she greets him with a shy, coy smile, gently brushing against him as they walk. While remaining lightheartedly playful (even as he says he loves her and has been with other women), her silences and distant looks show a contemplative seriousness. And Seberg’s natural sensuality colors both her performance and the film itself. Though she appeared in 34 films, "Breathless" is the one that immortalized her.
Wanting to be an actress since the age of twelve (after seeing Marlon Brando in his film debut, "The Men”), Iowa-born Jean Seberg studied acting and won local awards. When director Otto Preminger launched a highly publicized worldwide search in 1955 for the lead in his upcoming film “Saint Joan” (rivaling the hunt for “Scarlett O’Hara” in “Gone With the Wind”), Seberg’s acting teacher wrote him a letter recommending her. Out of some 18,000 applicants and 3,000 auditioners, Preminger was instantly captivated by Seberg’s inner strength, enchanting presence, and innocence. She was cast in the role and became famous before even making a movie. At just seventeen, Seberg was whisked from a small Midwestern town to London to shoot the film, never having set foot in a studio, let alone in front of a movie camera. She had no experience that could have prepared her for what was to come.
A notoriously temperamental director (nicknamed “Otto the Monster”), Otto Preminger was a tyrant to Seberg during the filming of “Saint Joan”, often yelling, shouting, and insulting her. Though she remained composed on set, she would break down in tears after each day’s shoot. Co-star John Gielgud recalled in the book “Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King”: “Having chosen her but then decided it was a mistake, Preminger was utterly horrible to her on the set. She didn’t know anything about phrasing or pacing or climax — all the things the part needed — but she was desperately eager to learn and also desperately insecure about everything”. In an interview with Cinépanorama, Seberg herself remembered: “[Preminger] so intimidated me.… Bit by bit I drew back inside, just like a turtle. He himself admitted that in American newspapers. He said he was convinced that what he saw in me when he chose me for ‘Saint Joan’ was real, but that he just couldn’t draw it out of me the way he should have”.
Released in 1957, “Saint Joan” was a complete failure, with critics harshly blaming Seberg for the film’s shortcomings. Preminger defended her in his autobiography, writing, “Many people blamed Jean Seberg and her inexperience. That is unfair. I alone am to blame”. Still believing in her, he cast her in his next film, “Bonjour Tristesse”, filmed mostly in France. Though it fared slightly better, Seberg again received poor reviews, and her career seemed over before it began.
After appearing in “The Mouse That Roared” with Peter Sellers, Seberg struggled to find work. Hoping to gain more confidence in front of the camera, she returned to study acting, diction, and mime. “Bonjour Tristesse” found an appreciative audience in France, including Godard, who offered her “Breathless” (seeing “Patricia” as an extension of her “Bonjour Tristesse” character). She and Godard initially didn’t get along well, as set photographer Raymond Cauchetier describes in his book “New Wave”: “[Seberg], who was used to big-budget Hollywood productions, was driven crazy by [Godard’s method of working]. On the first day of shooting, on the Champs-Élysées, she got into a shouting match with Godard… Jean wanted to quit the film and return to America. Eventually Godard managed to convince her to continue for a few days more, just to see how it went; in the end she stayed for the rest of the film, and she did well out of it — [“Breathless”] made her world famous and gave her career a huge lift”.
Praised for her performance in "Breathless" (which earned her a Best Foreign Actress BAFTA Award nomination), Seberg worked continually through the 1960s in Europe and Hollywood (mostly in France), in films like: "Échappement libre" (“Backfire”), directed by Jean Becker (re-teaming her with Belmondo); “Lilith", opposite Warren Beatty and Kim Hunter, which contains one of her best performances (a surprisingly good movie though it didn't do well); and Chabrol's "La ligne de démarcation" ("Line of Demarcation"). She moved back to the US, where she appeared in mostly mediocre films, with standouts being "Paint Your Wagon", and the all-star 1970 blockbuster, “Airport”.
Seberg fell in love with Paris in 1958, the same year she married a French lawyer. After that marriage ended, she wed French novelist and filmmaker Romain Gary in 1961. They had a son and later planned to divorce in 1968. A devoted supporter of civil rights since her teens, Seberg donated to many causes in the late 1960s, including the Black Panther Party, who by 1969, was the FBI’s top target. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI labeled Black activists and their allies as national threats, which now included Seberg. FBI files later revealed their plan to “cause her embarrassment and cheapen her image with the public". At the time, Seberg was pregnant and hoping to reconcile with Gary. When her pregnancy became visible, the FBI planted a false story claiming the baby’s father was a Black Panther. The rumor leaked to the Los Angeles Times and was picked up by Newsweek, naming her directly. Gary believed the story despite her denials. The resulting stress sent her into premature labor and her daughter died two days after birth. Seberg held an open-casket funeral in her hometown so the press could see the baby’s white skin, exposing the lie. Afterward, she returned to Paris a broken woman.
Over the following years, Seberg was relentlessly harassed, wiretapped, and stalked by the FBI, even while living in France. Aware of the surveillance and living in constant fear, she began to unravel psychologically. She and Gary divorced in 1970, and two years later, she married director Dennis Berry (they separated in 1976). After 1973, she appeared in only a few more films. According to Gary, Seberg tried to take her life every year on the anniversary of her daughter’s death. In 1979, after being missing for just over a week, she was found dead in the back seat of her car, wrapped in a blanket, with barbiturates nearby and a suicide note to her son asking for forgiveness. She was 40 years old.
A final mention goes to Raoul Coutard’s dazzlingly revolutionary cinematography. His sometimes jittery handheld camerawork gives "Breathless" a spontaneous, living energy, enhanced by his exquisite use of natural light. The imagery is unforgettable — “Patricia” and her boss framed before a vast glass window overlooking Paris, her luminous ascent on a glowing escalator, the streetlights illuminating on the Champs-Élysées, or “Michel's” arriving car reflected in "Patricia's" sunglasses. Coutard’s natural lighting grounds the film in realism, while his daring compositions, unconventional framing, and inventive angles transform that realism into visual poetry. His work perfectly complements Godard’s unpredictable, raw, and electrifying direction, redefining how films could be shot.
Paris-born Raoul Coutard began his career as a photojournalist, covering the French Indochina War for Life, Paris Match, and Look magazines. He entered cinema by accident, thinking he’d been hired as a still photographer for 1958’s "La Passe du Diable", only to learn he was the cinematographer. Three films later came "Breathless". Working with a tight budget, Coutard improvised brilliantly, like having Godard push him in a wheelchair for tracking shots, hiding with his camera in a mail cart for street shots, or using photographic film stock to better capture night scenes. Coutard soon became the defining cinematographer of the French New Wave, shooting nearly all of Godard’s films through "Weekend", as well as several for Truffaut (including the masterpiece"Jules and Jim"), Jacques Demy’s "Lola", and the groundbreaking documentary "Chronicle of a Summer".
Coutard's other films include "The Defector" (starring Montgomery Clift), Costa-Gavras’s "Z", and "Rocky Road to Dublin", and he directed four films, including "Hoa Binh", which won the Prix Jean Vigo and was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. Over his career, he filmed more than 80 movies and earned honors from the César Awards, Cannes, Venice, and the American Society of Cinematographers. His inventive style influenced generations of cinematographers, like Conrad Hall and László Kovács. Raoul Coutard died in 2016 at age 92.
Godard, his Cahiers du Cinéma circle, and their films (especially "Breathless"), ignited cinematic movements around the world, influencing the British New Wave, New German Cinema, Japanese and Czechoslovak New Waves, and the American New Wave (which I discuss in my posts on "Bonnie and Clyde", "The Miracle Worker", and "The Graduate").
"Breathless" has been referenced or paid homage to in countless TV shows, novels, songs, music videos, and films (including several nods to it in "Bonnie and Clyde"). It was remade in Hollywood in 1983, starring Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky, directed by Jim McBride. Most recently, the 2025 film "Nouvelle Vague" (a fictionalized take on its making starring Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin) hit theaters and is now on Netflix.
Daring, electric, and endlessly influential, this week’s film isn’t just entertaining — it’s a crash course in the art of cinema. Enjoy the mesmerizing "Breathless"!
This blog is a (currently triweekly) series exploring classic films from the silent era through the 1970s. Each post recommends a film to watch, aiming to entertain, inform, and deepen your appreciation of cinema — its stars, directors, writers, the studio system, and more. Be sure to visit the HOME page to learn more, subscribe for email updates, and check out THE MOVIES page for a full list of films. Please comment, share with others, and subscribe so you never miss a post. Thanks for reading!
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