Breathless

Nine years ago, I fell in love with Breathless. Time has aged her since, but poems of chaos, having little structure, are gloriously free from decay.

The camera in Breathless, which was wielded by Raoul Coutard, is jumpy, fluid, irritable, and comic -- alive with glimpses, sudden turns, rude stares, and angry changes of mood.

It is a thin story, filled to the brim with extraordinary character of the modem, wild, criminal youth, as exemplified by Belmondo.

A hip, jokey thriller in which the sketchy plot serves as an excuse for stylistic flourishes and philosophical asides.

With the appearance of Breathless, we have a film that is new, aesthetically and morally.

In an era before social media, Breathless presages the hyper-narcissistic age we embody where everyone with a phone and an Instagram account can create and curate whatever type of existence they choose.



Breathless seems to me the most original, insolently gifted and shattering work the young French directors have, yet produced.

Breathless, the most important New Wave film which has reached the United States, is a frightening little chase comedy with no big speeches and no pretentions.

Dedicated to Monogram films, Breathless (originally released in France under the name À bout de souffle) is [Jean-Luc] Godard’s B-movie tribute, a crime movie taken apart and rebuilt from the ground up.