Breathless (À Bout de Souffle)

Radio Times“the keystone of the French New Wave...” Godard's masterpiece employed just about every cinematic trick associated with the nouvelle vague: location shooting, direct sound, hand-held footage, jump cuts, in-jokes and visual tributes to master film-makers...

Total Film “An existential enquiry into love and death, freedom and betrayal...” A welcome 40th anniversary re-release for one of cinema's landmarks. A pastiche of American gangster flicks, with added philosophical contemplation, Breathless jump-cuts through Paris with real panache...

Empire“One of Godard's finest films...” Fast and loose, with a buzzing sense of the potential of the cinema undercut by the beginnings of Godard's intellectual rigour, this is a homage to the American gangster film, and an attack on the very ideas of Americans, gangsters and films...

this is london“Fifty years on, Breathless is still brilliant...” Belmondo and Seberg, the fractured story’s lovers, stranded between traditional values they reject and a future they don’t quite understand, are as pertinent today as then. And the film-making still looks an extraordinary mosaic of invention...

Little White Lies“Influential. Innovative. Incredible...” With an impact on modern cinema that is undeniable, with filmmakers such as Scorsese and Tarantino all citing its influence – the film is also a stunning work in its right, full of power and vitality that, well, is breathtaking...

The Telegraph“One of the defining art moments of the post-war period...” It’s a riot of possibilities, a rewiring and an electrification of the cinematic landscape, a dizzying vortex of energy and beady-eyed brio that fused American B-movies, polemical intelligence and proto-verite camerawork to revolutionary effect...

The Independent“Proof that you can still be cool at 50...” Its insolent, intimate, off-the-cuff style is still copied everywhere in cinema. Belmondo's lean, Bogartian hoodlum and Jean Seberg's tragic American waif are playfully and rather heartlessly drawn, but together they seem to glow off the screen...

Guardian“Another opportunity to marvel at the sheer joie de vivre of this film...” The whole movie is one continuous, inspired cine-jazz solo. There is simply no other film which demonstrates so perfectly what it feels like to be young and in love...

Time Out film“So damn cool...” That Breathless still comes across as modern and confrontational is a sign of how much it’s been copied and how radical it was for a young French filmmaker... If you’ve never seen it, see it now....

Channel4 Film“Not yet reviewed”