Breathless

UK Release Date. 8 July 1961
Certification. X
Running Time. 1 hour 30 mins
Director. Jean-Luc Godard
Cast. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg.
Rating. 76%

Review.

Nouvelle Vague (or French New Wave) was the term given to the revolutionary French film movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which saw directors such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol reject traditional filmmaking methods in favour of a more personal, experimental, and artistically driven approach. The experimentation with editing techniques, unconventional narratives and a focus on contemporary themes was profoundly influential on global cinema at the time, and has inspired generations of filmmakers worldwide thereafter.

1961's Breathless (À bout de souffle) signalled the arrival of one of France’s most influential directors, Jean-Luc Godard. Screened as the opening film in The Glasgow Film Theatre’s current Cinemasters season [4 January 2026 - 23 February 2026], Godard's first feature-length film is regarded as the original Nouvelle Vague masterpiece, and one of the most influential films in cinema.

Originally based on a story by François Truffaut, and heavily inspired by the film noir of the 1940s and 1950s, Breathless features a standout performance from Jean-Paul Belmondo (as the petty criminal on the run, Michel Poiccard) and the delectable Jean Seberg (as the American student and New York Herald Tribune street-hawker, Patricia Franchini). For a film about a fugitive on the run, the camera spends an awful amount of time in a Parisian bedroom as the two main characters inanely muse over youth, freedom and grief. Yet, the result is highly infectious.

Photographed by the renowned cinematographer Raoul Coutard, Breathless was shot using a lightweight 35mm Éclair Caméflex, but it could have just as easily been a portable, handheld Bolex camera. The result is a visual style so sinuous, monochrome and non-professional. All of the sound was added in post-production. Edited by Cécile Decugis, Breathless featured an extraordinary amount of unconventional (at the time) jump cuts - radical at the time, but now commonplace in cinema, so much so that we barely notice them. Finally, the writing and, in particular, the quotability of Breathless. There are punchlines and a pulpiness to Godard’s writing throughout that set a tone for an entirely new age of cinema.

I wonder what it must have been like to be 20 years old and to watch Godard’s Breathless in the summer of 1961? It’s incredible to consider how detached from other feature films being made at the time Breathless was. Breathless changed the grammar of films. The film starts off unsettling, but you quickly get accustomed to this new anarchistic format, and by the film's conclusion, it’s completely inhabited its own style - a style you've embraced.

But there’s one element that’s hard to deconstruct or sound intelligent about – the fact that the film is so damn cool. Whether it's Jean Seberg's iconic super-short, cropped blonde pixie cut or Jean-Paul Belmondo's fondness for Aviators and unfiltered Gitanes. Sixty years later, Breathless still feels far more ahead of the game than most films of today.

The Glasgow Film Theatre are showing eight Jean-Luc Godard films as part of the Cinemasters season, and I'd very much like to get along to another couple of screenings if possible, particularly My Life to Live (Vivre Sa Vie) and Pierrot the Fool (Pierrot le fou).