Jean-Luc Godard’s brilliant Nouvelle Vague classic is still wonderfully fresh, even half a century on
The rerelease of Godard’s Breathless is another opportunity to marvel at the sheer joie de vivre of this film, at its pure, raw, chaotic newness – still fresh after all this time – and at the fascinatingly and exasperatingly unschooled quality of Godard’s film-making. Jean-Paul Belmondo is the smouldering tough guy and Bogart enthusiast who has killed a cop; Jean Seberg is the gamine
American would-be journalist and novelist who is hanging out with this man, just to see if she is really in love. Belmondo and Seberg’s aimless, languorous, erotic conversation in her apartment is a glorious riff; in fact the whole movie is one continuous, inspired cine-jazz solo. There is simply no other film which demonstrates so perfectly what it feels like to be young and in love.