In celebration of the film’s 60th anniversary, Breathless (À bout de souffle) has been stunningly restored.
The epitome of cinematic cool which inspired a generation of moviemakers from Quentin Tarantino and Tony Scott, to Lars Von Trier and Terence Malick, BREATHLESS (À Bout De Souffle) features iconic performances from Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg as the central, most delightful and insolent couple in cinema history – young, effortlessly stylish, and in love in Paris.
Based on a story by Francois Truffaut and photographed by New Wave legend Raoul Coutard, Jean-Luc Godard’s film debut is a jazzy riff on Film Noir. With its non-stop pace BREATHLESS reinvented the grammar of movies and spearheaded the French New Wave of filmmaking.
Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) considers himself a suave bad guy in the manner of Humphrey Bogart with his cigarettes, hat, sunglasses and determined unconformity. While driving a stolen car he impulsively kills a policeman. Hiding out in his student girlfriend Patricia’s (Jean Seberg) Paris apartment he tries to pull together enough money to get the pair to Italy. But when Patricia learns that her boyfriend is being investigated for murder, she begins to question her loyalties.
BREATHLESS (À Bout De Souffle) has been painstakingly restored in 4K by STUDIOCANAL with the help of the CNC, within the framework of the Selective Aid for the Digitization of Cinematographic Heritage Works. This restoration was supervised by the laboratory L'Image Retrouvée. The teams restored BREATHLESS from the original film negatives, which were originally shot on two types of film: Gevaert Belgium and Ilford Pancromatic. Due respect was given to these two different textures of film during the restoration process, resulting in a fully realized 4K restoration which allows audiences to enjoy the film in this new definition, with full appreciation of the original artistic intentions of the Director.
Available on 4K UHD Collector’s edition with 12” vinyl soundtrack, DVD, Blu-ray and digital November 9th.