New print!

Next to Citizen Kane, Breathless is the most famous first feature in the history of cinema, and is, like Kane, a work which revolutionized film form. Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo became instant icons as the amoral American making her living in Paris selling the New York Herald Tribune and the small-time gangster on the run from the police who is betrayed and destroyed by her. Godard's blithe mixing of tones and influences, his nonchalant attitude towards violence and his innovative visual style (those legendary jump cuts) reflected his determination to make a film "where anything goes: that was what it was all about. Anything people did could be integrated in the film... I said to myself: we have already had Bresson, we have just had [Hiroshima, mon amour], a certain kind of cinema has just drawn to a close, maybe ended, so let's add the finishing touch, let's show that anything goes." "The most important of the New Wave films [and] also the most passionate" (Andrew Sarris).