Breathless

À bout de souffle (1960)

Timing: 1:30 (90 min)

7.5/10
1972

7.734/10
31245

7.6/10
95000

All about film

Video 6

Photo 59

Actors and characters

Release date

1960-03-16

Country

France

Production

SNC, Les Films Impéria, Les Productions Georges de Beauregard

Genre

Drama, Crime

Budget

$400 000

Revenue

$354 521

Website

Director

Jean-Luc Godard

Actors

Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Henri-Jacques Huet, Roger Hanin, Van Doude, Claude Mansard, Liliane Dreyfus, Michel Fabre, Jean-Pierre Melville
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Georges de Beauregard

Operator

Raoul Coutard

Composer

Martial Solal

Artist

Audition

Editing

Cécile Decugis
All team (14)

• To make the actors' performance more natural, Godard would explain to them what was required of them in a scene directly during filming.
• Michel Poicard mentions someone named Bob Montagne. Bob Montagne is the main character in Jean-Pierre Melville’s film “Bob the Gambler” (1955).
• In the film, Michel Poicard is sometimes presented as Laszlo Kovacs. Laszlo Kovacs is a character from Claude Chabrol’s 1959 film “Double Play”.
• Godard couldn't afford a camera dolly, so the cameraman was wheeled around on a rolling chair in many scenes. He borrowed this technique from Jean-Pierre Melville.
• Melville himself appears in a cameo role as the writer Parvulescu, who gives his first interview to Patricia. Melville borrowed the answers to her questions and his mannerisms from Nabokov – he had observed all of this in one of the writer’s television interviews.
• Filming took place from August 17 to September 15, 1959.
• Godard and Truffaut wrote the script before the start of each shooting day, and the actors had to improvise their dialogue as filming progressed.
• The film completely lacks subtitles.