À bout de souffle

Few films have garnered as much scholarly and critical acclaim as Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (Breathless, 1959). Revered as one of the most influential works in postwar European modernist cinema, Godard’s debut feature stands alongside cinematic landmarks such as Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta (Rome Open City, 1949), Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960) and Otto e mezzo (1963), and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966). Alongside François Truffaut’s Les 400 coups (The 400 Blows, 1959) and Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Godard’s groundbreaking film played a pivotal role in heralding the arrival of the French Nouvelle Vague, or New Wave. This cinematic movement sparked a revolution among filmmakers, both within France and beyond its borders, challenging traditional narrative conventions and elevating the filmmaker to the status of an auteur. As one of the most iconic films of the New Wave and European auteur cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, À bout de souffle left an indelible mark on subsequent generations of filmmakers. Its innovative techniques, unconventional narrative style, and exploration of rebellious youth culture, cinephilia, American culture, and modernity continue to inspire directors across different decades through homage, direct references, and indirect influences. The film’s legacy is evident in numerous articles, monographs, volumes, documentaries, and film essays, with Mark Cousins’s monograph The Story of Film (2004) and his monumental documentary series, The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011), serving as notable examples, highlighting its impact on filmmakers worldwide, including John Cassavetes, Arthur Penn, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and others in the United States, as well as in India, Italy, Japan, Poland, and Senegal. The breadth of literature dedicated to this film is expansive and varied, ranging from passing mentions in volumes celebrating cinematic classics to comprehensive, book-length analyses devoted solely to unraveling its complexities and significance. This body of work encompasses a diverse array of formats, including essays, scholarly articles, interviews, monographs, multiauthored collections, online blogs, and commentaries on both the script and the film itself, alongside exhibition catalogues. As a seminal work in the history of world cinema, À bout de souffle has firmly entrenched itself in critical and scholarly discourse for more than six decades, transcending the confines of Godard studies. It continues to offer fresh perspectives on its position within Jean-Luc Godard’s oeuvre, its place within modern cinema, and its enduring influence on global cinema, as well as its nuanced exploration of, and commentary on, themes ranging from modernity to Western society and colonialism.