Breathless
(À bout de souffle)

“There’s Potemkin, Citizen Kane, and this…Godard’s first film,” film critic J. Hoberman once wrote about the French New Wave classic. In his audacious debut feature, the filmmaking infant terrible broke the rules of cinema to create something that remains just as fresh, funny, and innovative today. Influenced by American noir and Hollywood gangster films, the plot goes something like this: Small-time crook Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo, doing his best Bogart) steals a car and murders a policeman. While on the run, he reconnects with old flame newspaper-seller Patricia (Jean Seberg, in classic pixie-girl mode) and tries to convince her to go on the lam with him.

But what is it really about? Truth, lies, love, desire, masculinity, ennui, existentialism. Along with Miles Davis and the Beats, Breathless helped bring about the birth of cool, breaking open film form with its revolutionary use of jump-cuts and improvisational energy and influencing generations of filmmakers from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater.

Screening in 35mm.

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