À bout de souffle (1960)

Jean-Luc Godard’s cock-of-the-walk calling card, mixing pulp pastiche and upstart rebellion with Jean-Paul Belmondo’s footloose Parisian delinquent.

“The moment when cinema and cinephilia first consummated their marriage. Two becoming one. Amen.” Katie Rife

“The plot may suggest a classic thriller – a story of gangsters and a toxic passion between a criminal (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and an American student in Paris (Jean Seberg) – but the form is just revolutionary. The narration, the editing, the dialogue, the way the shooting interacts with the city and the people of Paris, all its spontaneity and improvisation: it prefigured a new cinema, movies as manifesto.” Mustapha Benfodil

“This masterpiece of modern French cinema liberated filmmakers from a lot of constraints and began a new era of playfulness. Without it, cinema today would not be what it is.” András Bálint Kovács

1960 France
Directed by
Jean-Luc Godard
Produced by
Georges de Beauregard
Written by
Jean-Luc Godard
Featuring
Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Henri-Jacques Huet
Running time
90 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

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