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Breathless (1960 film)

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Breathless
Theatrical release poster
FrenchÀ bout de souffle
Directed byJean-Luc Godard
Screenplay byJean-Luc Godard
Story by
Produced byGeorges de Beauregard
Starring
CinematographyRaoul Coutard
Edited byCécile Decugis
Music byMartial Solal
Production
company
Les Films Impéria
Distributed bySociété nouvelle de cinématographie
Release date
  • 16 March 1960 (1960-03-16)
Running time
90 minutes
CountryFrance
Languages
  • French
  • English
BudgetFRF 400,000(US$80,000)[1]
Box office2,295,912 admissions (France)[2][3]

Breathless (French: À bout de souffle, lit. 'Out of Breath') is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend Patricia. The film was Godard's first feature-length work and represented Belmondo's breakthrough as an actor.

Breathless is an influential example of French New Wave (nouvelle vague) cinema.[4] Along with François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour, both released a year earlier, it brought international attention to new styles of French filmmaking. At the time, Breathless attracted much attention for its bold visual style, which included then unconventional use of jump cuts.

Upon its initial release in France, the film attracted over two million viewers. It has since been considered one of the best films ever made, appearing in Sight & Sound magazine's decennial polls of filmmakers and critics on the subject on multiple occasions. In May 2010, a fully restored version of the film was released in the United States to coincide with the film's 50th anniversary.

Plot

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Michel is a youthful, dangerous criminal who models himself on the film persona of Humphrey Bogart. After stealing a car in Marseille, Michel shoots and kills a policeman who has followed him onto a country road. Penniless and on the run from the police, he turns to an American love interest, Patricia, a student and aspiring journalist, who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the boulevards of Paris. The ambivalent Patricia unwittingly hides him in her apartment as he simultaneously tries to seduce her and call in a loan to fund their escape to Italy. Patricia says she is pregnant, probably with Michel's child. When the police question her, Patricia realizes that Michel is on the run. Eventually she betrays him, but before the police arrive, she tells Michel what she has done. He is somewhat resigned to a life in prison, and does not try to escape at first. A friend of his arrives and attempts to hand him a gun, but he refuses. As the police arrive, the friend drives off, but throws the gun towards Michel, who picks it up. The police shoot him in the street, and after running along the block, he collapses. As Patricia stands over the dying Michel, he curses her with his last words, but she does not understand his French.[5]: 39 

Cast

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Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless

Production

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Background and writing

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Breathless was loosely based on a newspaper article that François Truffaut read in The News in Brief about Michel Portail and his American journalist girlfriend Beverly Lynette. In November 1952, Portail stole a car to visit his sick mother in Le Havre and ended up killing a motorcycle cop named Grimberg.[6][7][8] Truffaut wrote a treatment with Claude Chabrol, but they disagreed on the story structure.

Godard was working as a press agent at 20th Century Fox when he met producer Georges de Beauregard. He helped Beauregard with the script for Pêcheur d'Islande, but pitched him on Breathless because he liked the treatment. Chabrol and Truffaut were now star directors. They were at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1959 when they wrote Beauregard to endorse Godard as the director. Their names helped greenlight the film, but both would have very small roles in its production.[8]

The final screenplay deviates very little from Truffaut's original treatment, aside from the much longer bedroom scene.[9]: 153  Godard wrote the script as he went along. He told Truffaut, "the subject will be the story of a boy who thinks of death and of a girl who doesn't."[10]: 29–30  Truffaut believed Godard's change to the ending was personal, "In my script, the film ends with the boy walking along the street as more and more people turn and stare after him, because his photo's on the front of all the newspapers...Jean-Luc chose a violent end because he was by nature sadder than I."[11][10]

Godard used screenwriter Paul Gégauff, who was known as a swaggering seducer of women, as inspiration for Michel's character.[8] Fellow New Wave director Jacques Rivette appears in a cameo as the dead body of a man hit by a car in the street.[12]: 74  The film includes many in-jokes like the young woman selling Cahiers du Cinéma and Michel's occasional alias of Laszlo Kovacs, the name of Belmondo's character in Chabrol's 1959 film Web of Passion.

Jean-Paul Belmondo was not famous outside of France prior to Breathless. In order to broaden the film's commercial appeal, Godard sought a prominent leading lady who would be willing to work in his low-budget film. He came to Jean Seberg through his acquaintance with her husband Francois Moreuil.[13] In June 1959, Seberg agreed to appear in the film for $15,000, one-sixth of the film's budget. Godard gave Moreuil a cameo in the film.[8] During filming, Seberg privately questioned Godard's style and wondered if the film would be commercially viable. After it was a success, she reprised her character in Godard's Le Grand Escroc.[13]

Godard wanted cinematographer Michel Latouche to shoot the film after working with him on his short films. Instead, De Beauregard hired Raoul Coutard, who he had on contract.[14]

The 1958 ethno-fiction Moi, un noir has been credited as a key influence for Godard. This can be seen in the adoption of jump-cuts, use of real locations rather than constructed sets and the documentary, newsreel format of filming.[15][16]

Filming

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Godard envisaged Breathless as a documentary and tasked cinematographer Raoul Coutard to shoot the entire film on a hand-held camera with next to no lighting.[17] In order to shoot under low-light levels, Coutard had to use Ilford HP5 film, which was not available as motion picture film stock at the time. He therefore took 18-metre lengths of HP5 film sold for 35mm still cameras and spliced them into 120-metre rolls. During development he pushed the negative one stop from 400 ASA to 800 ASA.[18]

The size of the sprocket holes in the photographic film was different from that of motion picture film, and the Eclair Cameflex camera was the only camera that worked for the film used.[14] Nearly the entire film had to be dubbed in post-production because the Cameflex was noisy and incapable of synchronized sound.[14][19]

Filming ran 23 days from August 17 until September 12, 1959. It included President Eisenhower's visit to Paris, which Godard used as a backdrop for the film.[17][9]: 152  The crew met at Café Notre Dame and shot for two hours until Godard ran out of ideas. According to Coutard, the film was virtually improvised on the spot, and Godard wrote dialogue in an exercise book that no one was allowed to see.[8] Godard gave lines to Belmondo and Seberg with only brief rehearsals before filming.

Locations were selected in advance, and assistant director Pierre Rissient described the shoot as very organized. However, filming was done without permits, adding to the spontaneous feel Godard wanted.[20] Michel's death was filmed on the rue Campagne-Première in Paris.[8] Actor Richard Balducci said shooting days could range from 15 minutes to 12 hours, depending on how many ideas Godard had. Producer Georges de Beauregard wrote a letter to the crew complaining about the erratic shooting schedule. Coutard claimed Beauregard got in a fistfight with Godard when he found the director at a café on a day when he had called in sick.[14]

Godard shot the movie's first sequence toward the end, but most of the filming was chronological. There was minimal crew and no lights for the bedroom scene with Michel and Patricia at the Hôtel de Suède. Godard was determined to shoot there after living at the hotel in the early 1950s. Instead of renting a dolly with complicated and time-consuming tracks to lay, Godard often pushed Coutard in a wheelchair.[14] For certain street scenes, Coutard hid in a postal cart with a hole for the lens and packages piled on top of him.

Editing

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Breathless was processed and edited at GTC Labs in Joinville by Cécile Decugis and his assistant Lila Herman. Decugis said the film earned a pre-release reputation as the worst film of the year.[8]

Pierre Rissient said that the jump cut style was not intended during the film's shooting or the initial stages of editing.[14] Coutard said that "there was a panache in the way it was edited that didn't match at all the way it was shot. The editing gave it a very different tone than the films we were used to seeing." The film's use of jump cuts has been called innovative. Andrew Sarris analyzed it as existentially representing "the meaninglessness of the time interval between moral decisions."[21]

Publicity

[edit]

Godard and his media-savvy friends were well-positioned to gin up publicity before the movie was released. Richard Balducci was in charge of promoting the film and he embedded a reporter from France-Observateur in the crew to report on the production. A novelization by Claude Francolin was released in February 1960, a month before the film's release. Columbia also issued a soundtrack album of Martial Solal's music.[10]: 93–4, 97 

Reception

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Breathless was on the cover of Cahiers du cinéma's January issue, months before its release.[22] That same month, Godard was awarded the Prix Jean Vigo for his work on the film.[12]: 72  Luc Moullet wrote, "Of all the films now being made by the newcomers to French cinema, À bout de souffle is not the best, since Les 400 coups has a head start on it; it is not the most striking - we have Hiroshima mon amour for that. But it is the most representative."[23] By June of that year, it was already pointed to as "the crowning point of the new wave".[24]

Bosley Crowther called the film a "fascinating communication" which is "emphatically unrestrainedly vicious, completely devoid of moral tone" and shocking due to the "vigor of its reportorial candor". Crowther described Godard's editing as "pictorial cacophony". He saw Belmondo as "hypnotically ugly" and "the most effective cigarette-mouther and thumb-to-lip rubber since time began".[25] Archer Winsten deemed it "a very fine piece of work". Though he found the film too insubstantial to be remembered, he concluded "the technique should linger, and so should these talents, here so highly visible and memorable."[26]

In a 1972 essay about Breathless, Oliver Stone zeroed in on the bedroom scenes as the core of the film. He explains the rigidity of cinematic bedroom scenes with their "definite pace from window to bed and climactically into the sheets. Even in the rather perverse imaginations of Vadim or Chabrol, these basic rhythms operate. With Godard, no such thing."[27]

Richard Brody enthused, "Breathless opened...not in an art house but at a chain of four commercial theaters, selling 259,046 tickets in four weeks. The eventual profit was substantial...The film's success with the public corresponded to its generally ardent and astonished critical reception."[12]: 72 

The New York Times critic A. O. Scott wrote in 2010, 50 years after the release of Breathless, that it is both "a pop artifact and a daring work of art" and even at 50, "still cool, still new, still – after all this time! – a bulletin from the future of movies."[28] Roger Ebert included it on his "Great Movies" list in 2003, writing that "No debut film since Citizen Kane in 1942 has been as influential," dismissing its jump cuts as the biggest breakthrough, and instead calling revolutionary its "headlong pacing, its cool detachment, its dismissal of authority, and the way its narcissistic young heroes are obsessed with themselves and oblivious to the larger society."[29]

The film has a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 82 reviews. Its critical consensus states, "Breathless rewrote the rules of cinema -- and more than 50 years after its arrival, Jean-Luc Godard's paradigm-shifting classic remains every bit as vital".[30]

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films.[31]

Themes

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Oliver Stone invokes Friedrich Nietzsche's metaphor of the "last man" during his analysis of Patricia. Stone paraphrases Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "What is pain? What is love? What is creation?...What is a star? What is anything anymore?"[32] Stone concludes that such philosophical skepticism is a logical endpoint for a character like Patricia.[27]

Hubert Dreyfus sees the film as exemplifying Nietzsche's conception of ("active" versus "passive") nihilism. Michel is carelessly active and bold. He falls in love with Patricia, who is uncomfortable in such engagements. Her cooperation with the police leads to his death. Patricia's monotone reaction to Michel's death indicates her brutal distance to relationships. Michel knew her coldness would end badly for him.[33]

Closing dialogue

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Michel's dying words are mumbled and hard to hear: "C'est vraiment dégueulasse". Throughout the film, "dégueulasse" has been clearly used to mean "disgusting" in reference to things like Michel's request for a loan and the music of Frédéric Chopin. The word has many other implications in French. It can be a synonym for "bitch" or "heel", as well as implying nausea and the urge to vomit.[9]: 17, 148  In French, bouche refers to the human mouth, while gueule means the wider mouth of an animal, e.g. dog, though commonly used for mouth and derogatory only in certain expressions, e.g. "ferme ta gueule" (shut your trap).

Original
MICHEL: C'est vraiment dégueulasse.
PATRICIA: Qu'est-ce qu'il a dit?
VITAL: Il a dit que vous êtes vraiment "une dégueulasse".
PATRICIA: Qu'est-ce que c'est "dégueulasse"?[9][34]

English
MICHEL: It's really disgusting.
PATRICIA: What did he say?
VITAL: He said you are really disgusting.
PATRICIA: What is "disgusting"?

Subsequent releases of the film have differing translations:

Fox-Lorber DVD (2001)
MICHEL: It's disgusting, really.
PATRICIA: What did he say?
VITAL: He said "You're a real scumbag".
PATRICIA: What's a scumbag?

Criterion Collection DVD (2007)/Restoration (2010)
MICHEL: Makes me want to puke.
PATRICIA: What did he say?
VITAL: He said you make him want to puke.
PATRICIA: What's that mean, "puke"?

References to other films

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Breathless is shot through with constant in-jokes and references to other films:[21]

Awards

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Legacy

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Godard said the success of Breathless was a mistake. He added "there used to be just one way. There was one way you could do things. There were people who protected it like a copyright, a secret cult only for the initiated. That's why I don't regret making Breathless and blowing that all apart."[14] In 1964, Godard described his and his colleagues' impact: "We barged into the cinema like cavemen into the Versailles of Louis XV."[12]: 72 

The British Film Institute included the film on several lists in its Sight and Sound magazine:

  • 1992: Critic's Poll, #22
  • 2002: Critic's Poll, #15[36]
  • 2012: Top Films of All Time, #13[37]
  • 2012: Directors' Top Films, #11[38]
  • 2022: Critics' Top Films of All Time, #38[39]
  • 2022: Director's Top Films of All Time, #15[40]

The BBC has also listed Breathless:

  • 2018: Greatest Foreign Language Films, #11[41]
[edit]
  • The film is frequently referenced in the Youth in Revolt book series, being a favorite of female protagonist Sheeni Saunders, including her dreams of running off to France and her fascination for Jean-Paul Belmondo.
  • In The Doom Generation, characters play the "smile or I'll choke you" game, and the film's semi-general theme is of a "nihilistic road movie".
  • The Australian band The Death Set named their album from 2011 after main character Michel Poiccard.[42]
  • The final scene is mentioned (and later alluded to visually) in The Squid and the Whale.[43]
  • In the third episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, "Android and I", a 35mm reel of this film can be seen on a table, beneath a reel of Alphaville, as Togusa and Batou are investigating the house of a suspect. Other Godard works are also scattered through the scene. Dialog from this film is recited by two other characters throughout the episode. Themes from this episode parallel themes from both this movie and Godard's complete oeuvre. The climax of the episode hinges on the final lines, including one additional line, from the final scene of the film.
  • In an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Sergeant Jeffords mentions Breathless when the detectives are discussing their favorite cop movies. Jeffords identifies the film as "François Truffaut's Breathless", despite the fact that only the director's name is generally used in such a way. In reference to this error, Jeffords is seen later in the season at a party, defending his statement by saying "movies are a writer's medium".[44]
  • In The Dreamers one of the protagonists re-enacts a scene from the film.
  • The final scene is recreated in Romeo Void's "Never Say Never" video.
  • In issue #30 of IDW's ongoing comic book series Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye, Whirl votes for repeat showings of the film during the crew's movie night.
  • The Canadian band The Tragically Hip made a music video for the song "In View" that pays homage to the film.
  • In the 2001 Novel The Incorrigible Optimists Club by Jean-Michel Guenassia, the main character sees the film in the cinema with his family. The theater is empty and the woman working the ticket stand advises against seeing it. Nonetheless, he loves the film.
  • The 2017 Malayalam-language film Mayaanadhi (Mystic River), directed by Ashiq Abu, draws inspiration from Breathless.[45]
  • The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde contains numerous visual references to Breathless, including an early shot of Warren Beatty wearing a fedora slanted over his eyes and with a match tilted upward held in his lips, echoing Jean-Paul Belmondo's hat and cigarette in the opening scenes of Breathless. Later Beatty also wears a pair of round-rim black sunglasses with one lens missing, an exact visual reference to Belmondo wearing the same sunglasses with a missing lens later in Breathless. Bonnie and Clyde also shares a general storyline with Breathless, involving a handsome, nihilistic young killer who steals cars and who connects with a beautiful, free-spirited young woman. Pauline Kael, in her 1967 review of Bonnie and Clyde in The New Yorker, wrote that "If this way of holding more than one attitude toward life is already familiar to us—if we recognize the make-believe robbers whose toy guns produce real blood, and the Keystone cops who shoot them dead, from Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player and Godard’s gangster pictures, Breathless and Band of Outsiders—it’s because the young French directors discovered the poetry of crime in American life (from our movies) and showed the Americans how to put it on the screen in a new, 'existential' way."
  • In A Very Secret Service, the characters go to see Breathless in a movie theater, and are shown watching the iconic final scene.
  • In The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, fictional actress Evelyn Hugo, at a low point in her career, watches Breathless and is inspired to go to Paris to revive her career.

Further reading

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Marie, Michel. The French New Wave: An Artistic School. Translated by Richard Neupert. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2002. 65.
  2. ^ Box office information for film at Box Office Story
  3. ^ "The Nowhere Inn (2021)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
  4. ^ Film: Video and DVD Guide 2007. London: Halliwell's. 2007. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-00-723470-7.
  5. ^ Lesage, Julia. Jean-Luc Godard: A Guide to References and Resources. G.K.Hall, 1979.
  6. ^ Warms, Richard L. "Breathless". sanmartians.net. Retrieved 4 September 2024. Sanmartians.net is a website used for Department of Anthropology courses at Texas State University, San Marcos
  7. ^ Fitzgerald, Jon (18 February 2024). "Episode 3: Before Sunrise - Richard Linklater". History of Film Festivals In 100 Movies. Retrieved 4 September 2024.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suède (1993). Directed by Claude Ventura. In Criterion Collection, Breathless. DVD, disc 2. 2007.
  9. ^ a b c d e Dudley Andrew (1987). Breathless. Rutgers Films in Print series. Rutgers University Press. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-8135-1253-2.

    Includes Continuity Script, Truffaut's treatment, interviews, and many reviews of the film.
  10. ^ a b c d Fotiade, Ramona (28 May 2013). A Bout de Souffle: French Film Guide. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-0-85772-117-4.
  11. ^ "Francois Truffaut on 'Breathless'" (PDF). Breathless 50th Anniversary Restoration. Rialto Pictures Pressbook. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 November 2017. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
  12. ^ a b c d Brody, Richard (2008). Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard. New York, New York: Metropolitan Books. ISBN 978-0-8050-8015-5.
  13. ^ a b "The Jean Seberg Enigma: Interview with Garry McGee" Archived 25 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine, Film Threat, 28 March. 2008
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Breathless. The Criterion Collection. Special Features, disc 1. Interviews. 2007.
  15. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: CinemaTyler (3 February 2015), What I Learned From Watching: Breathless (1960) [INTERACTIVE VIDEO], retrieved 2 July 2019
  16. ^ "CIP-IDF > Projections du 4 juin". www.cip-idf.org. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
  17. ^ a b Begery, Benjamin. Reflections: Twenty-one cinematographers at work, p. 200. ASC Press, Hollywood.
  18. ^ Salt, Barry (2009). Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis (3 ed.). Starword. p. 287. ISBN 978-0-9509066-5-2.
  19. ^ Begery, Benjamin. Reflections: Twenty-one cinematographers at work, p. 201. ASC Press, Hollywood.
  20. ^ Solomons, Jason (6 June 2010). "Jean-Luc Godard would just turn up scribble some dialogue, and we would rehearse maybe a few times". The Observer.
  21. ^ a b "Breathless as Film Criticism". Written by Jonathan Rosenbaum. In Criterion Collection, Breathless. DVD, disc 2. 2007.
  22. ^ Cahiers du cinéma. Janvier, 1960. Tome XVIII, No. 103.
  23. ^ Moullet, Luc. "Jean-Luc Godard", Cahiers du cinéma. Avril, 1960. Tome XVIII, No. 106. 25–36.
  24. ^ Labarthe, André S. Le plus pur regard, Cahiers du cinéma. Juin, 1960. Tome XVIII, No. 108. 48.
  25. ^ Crowther, Bosley. "Screen: Sordid View of French Life". The New York Times. February 8, 1961. 26.
  26. ^ Winsten, Archer. "Breathless", New York Post. February 8, 1961.
  27. ^ a b Stone, Oliver. "Riding the Crest of Chaos", The Village Voice. May 11, 1972. 87.
  28. ^ Scott, A. O. (21 May 2010). "A Fresh Look Back at Right Now". The New York Times. p. AR10. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  29. ^ Ebert, Roger (20 July 2003). "Breathless". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 14 June 2017.
  30. ^ "Breathless (1961)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 25 August 2024.
  31. ^ Thomas-Mason, Lee (12 January 2021). "From Stanley Kubrick to Martin Scorsese: Akira Kurosawa once named his top 100 favourite films of all time". Far Out Magazine. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
  32. ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. Penguin Books, 1978. 17.
  33. ^ Hubert Dreyfus (Spring 2006). "Breathless (À bout de souffle) Active & Passive Nihilism". Internet Archive. "Phil 7: Existentialism in Literature and Film", University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
  34. ^ "Breathless (1960) - FAQ". IMDb. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
  35. ^ "Berlinale: Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Retrieved 14 January 2010.
  36. ^ "Sight & Sound Top Ten Poll 2002". Archived from the original on 15 May 2012.
  37. ^ "Sight & Sound Poll 2012: Top 10 Films of All Time". Awards Daily. August 2012. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
  38. ^ "Directors' top 100". bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 24 August 2012. Retrieved 10 March 2016.
  39. ^ "Sight And Sound: Greatest Films of All Time Critics Poll 2022".
  40. ^ "Sight and Sound: Greatest Films of All Time Director's Poll 2022".
  41. ^ "The 100 Greatest Foreign Language Films". British Broadcasting Corporation. 29 October 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  42. ^ "The Death Set: Michel Poiccard". Pitchfork. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  43. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "Breathless reference in The Squid and the Whale". YouTube. 24 November 2009. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  44. ^ Ozeri, Gil; Liedman, Gabe; Engler, Michael (4 February 2014). "The Party". Brooklyn 9-9. Season 1. Episode 16. Fox. Jeffords: But Truffaut wrote Breathless, and I've always considered movies a writer's medium.
  45. ^ "Is Mayaanadhi a copy of Godard's French classic Breathless?". International Business Times. January 2018. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
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