Breathless

The late, revolutionary Jean-Luc Godard has a filmography that is one of the most monumental in cinema’s history. His first feature film was the harbinger of the French New Wave, both a jazzlike improvisation on American crime thrillers as well as a cinematic revolution. Breathless is as funny and daring as it was on its release over sixty years ago. The film features now-legendary performances from Jean-Paul Belmondo as the Bogart-inspired small-time criminal living on the edge and Jean Seberg as la petite américaine who casually sleeps with him and just as casually betrays him. Audaciously reinventing the grammar of movies, Breathless—based on a story idea by François Truffaut with Claude Chabrol as technical advisor—transformed cinema overnight and instantly put Godard in the rarified company of modernist masters. (90 mins., DCP)

Two years after his death, Godard's two final short films have been released and introduce tonight's screening. Scénarios collages paintings, film clips, and narration, movingly read on-screen by Godard the day before his assisted death. (17 mins., DCP) In the longer companion film, Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario”, Godard outlines a previous version of the project giving a glimpse of both a feature film never to be made and of his still agile mind at work. (35 mins., DCP)

See the complete Jean-Luc Godard: Now and Then lineup.

IMAGE CAPTION
Breathless, courtesy Rialto Pictures.