Breathless

press release: France | 1960 | DCP | 89 min. | French with English subtitles

Director: Jean-Luc Godard; cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Jean-Pierre Melville

Godard’s breakthrough first feature, from a scenario by François Truffaut, is the Parisian love story between a small-time hood (Belmondo) and an American woman (Seberg). This masterpiece of the nouvelle vague is sometimes a love letter to classic Hollywood cinema and sometimes a challenge to it. A recently restored 4K DCP will be screened.

Screenings mostly take place at 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Avenue. Once-a-month Sunday afternoon screenings take place at the Chazen Museum of Art, 750 University Avenue. In accord with current UW Madison policies, masks are required for entry to our venues. All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public. Please visit our website for a complete listing of programs and descriptions.

September 6, 2021 marked the passing of one of international cinema’s greatest leading men, Jean-Paul Belmondo. This February-April, we pay due homage to the tough, sometimes tender, and always irresistible Belmondo with three of his very best starring roles, beginning with the French New Wave movie that made him a superstar, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. After a few years as a go-to leading man for other, now-canonized New Wave movies and directors of the 1960s, Belmondo switched to mainstream European entertainments in the 70s and 80s, in particular, comedies and action vehicles like our second selection, The Hunter Will Get You (L’alpagueur), where the brave actor frequently performed his own hair-raising stunts. Belmondo returned, in 1974, to work for another nouvelle vague legend, Alain Resnais, in the nostalgic con artist bio-pic Stavisky.