Breathless (Criterion Collection)

Breathless (Criterion Collection) DVD Special Edition

There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard (Band of Outsiders) burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du cinéma. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo (Pierrot le fou) and Jean Seberg (Bonjour tristesse), Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured that cinema would never be the same.

TWO-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• Restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director of photography Raoul Coutard
• Archival interviews with director Jean-Luc Godard and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Jean-Pierre Melville
• Contemporary interviews with Coutard, assistant director Pierre Rissient, and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker
• Two video essays, one on Seberg and one on Breathless as film criticism
• Chambre 12, Hôtel de suède, an eighty-minute 1993 documentary about the making of Breathless
• Charlotte et son Jules, a 1959 short by Godard starring Belmondo
• Trailer
• Language: French
• Subtitles: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Run Time: 90 minutes

PLUS: An insert featuring an essay by scholar Dudley Andrew and a 1960 piece on the film by Godard