Breathless

Electrifying, nonchalant and bursting with unbridled energy – Jean-Luc Godard's legendary debut. The film that truly launched modern cinema. Small-time crook Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) arrives in Paris from Marseille in a stolen car. There he meets young American Patricia (Jean Seberg), taking her first steps as a journalist. The pair flirt and engage in a romantic game – will Michel's criminal dealings affect their relationship? Breaking with convention and proposing its own dynamic aesthetic, Breathless paved the way for all subsequent "new waves" and united a love of American culture with Parisian cinephilia and youthful spirit. It is difficult to overstate the film's influence on successive generations of filmmakers: from New Hollywood to countless independent directors, for whom Godard's bold work remains an undiminished source of inspiration. Shot by a small crew on the streets of Paris, Breathless also launched an iconic pairing: the audacious Belmondo and the modern, aloof Seberg. When we think of France as the capital of cinema, it is precisely the frames from Godard's debut that come to mind. Fascinated by Breathless, Richard Linklater made Nouvelle Vague, now arriving in Polish cinemas – a stylized account of the turn of the 50s and 60s and how one of cinema's most famous films came to be. The exhilarating genre play in Breathless is on one hand a revolt against the stale cinema of the 50s, which the New Wave filmmakers wanted to overcome, and on the other – the result of countless screenings of Hollywood B-movies that they passionately watched in Parisian cinemas. It is also an audacious declaration from a creator who seems to say: "My name is Godard and before your eyes I am changing what you all love most: CINEMA". Over 60 years after its premiere, Breathless remains a violent, exhilarating and still compelling classic. Restored 4K version distributed by Past Perfect