À Bout de Souffle movie storyline. Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a youthful, dangerous criminal who models himself on the film persona of Humphrey Bogart. After stealing a car in Marseille, Michel shoots and kills a policeman who has followed him onto a country road. Penniless and on the run from the police, he turns to an American love interest Patricia (Jean Seberg), a student and aspiring journalist, who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the boulevards of Paris.
The ambivalent Patricia unwittingly hides him in her apartment as he simultaneously tries to seduce her and call in a loan to fund their escape to Italy. Patricia says she is pregnant, probably with Michel’s child. She learns that Michel is on the run when questioned by the police. Eventually she betrays him, but before the police arrive, she tells Michel what she has done. He is somewhat resigned to a life in prison, and does not try to escape at first. The police shoot him in the street, and after a prolonged death run, he dies “à bout de souffle” (out of breath).
À Bout de Souffle (English: Breathless) is a 1960 French crime and drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard about a wandering criminal (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his American girlfriend (Jean Seberg). It was Godard’s first feature-length work and represented Belmondo’s breakthrough as an actor.
Breathless was one of the early, more influential examples of French New Wave (nouvelle vague) cinema.[4] Along with François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima, Mon Amour, both released a year earlier, it brought international attention to new styles of French filmmaking. At the time, the film attracted much attention for its bold visual style, which included unconventional use of jump cuts.
A fully restored version of the film was released in the U.S. for its 50th anniversary in May 2010. When originally released in France, the film attracted over 2 million viewers.
À Bout de Souffle (1960)
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Henri-Jacques Huet, Roger Hanin, Van Doude, Claude Mansard, Liliane Dreyfus, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard
Screenplay by: François Truffaut
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Raoul Coutard
Film Editing by: Cécile Decugis
Makeup Department: Phuong Maittret
Music by: Martial Solal
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: UGC (France)
Films Around The World (United States)
Release Date: March 16, 1960
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