Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, whose Film Socialisme left some reviewers scratching their heads at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, A bout de souffle / Breathless grossed $32.7k at four theaters in the United States, according to Box Office Mojo.
The French New Wave classic that has influenced filmmakers around the world is turning 50. Even so, there are some who find Breathless fresher than much of the stuff being churned out today.
"Its young and restless protagonists, Belmondo's Michel Poiccard and Seberg's Patricia Franchini, were created to live for and be alive in the moment on screen," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, "to give us a sense that what we were watching was unpredictably happening right in front of us, and that is still very much the feeling Breathless creates."
Godard is still making movies. Belmondo, though in frail health, is still around. Seberg, who had been discovered by Otto Preminger three years before Breathless, was found dead in her car in Paris in 1979, a "probable suicide," according to police. She was 41.