The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Breathless seems to have lost some of its critical standing recently, but it is still a really good film. It isn't really a film about anything much aside from a criminal who killed a policeman trying to persuade a student to run away with him, so in terms of story it might not rivet certain viewers. However, this is the work of an auteur at the very top of his game. Jean-Luc Goddard's direction is brilliant and he fills the film completely with a sheer, overwhelming energy that shatters cinematic conventions. The main character is unlikable but always compelling and Breathless, both in aesthetic and narrative terms, is a glorious example of rebellion and breaking free. It's a seriously cool movie and a genuinely hypnotic experience. Unfortunately, it's not quite a 5 star movie. The film sags in the middle during a drawn-out sequence in a hotel room with the 2 main characters talking endlessly about whether or not they're going to have sex, but after that the film picks up again. It is admittedly more an important film than a great one, but it is still a really good film and a highly interesting piece of film history. 8/10

Besides the fact that you will save $100,000 another reason to skip Film School is that you won't be required to sit through a screening of "Breathless" - a class that should be titled "How to Make a Self-Indulgent Home Movie Posing As Art" that examines what is essentially an exercise in cinematic masturbation.Okay, Godard did things differently. He not only ignored The Rules of filmmaking; he thumbed his nose at them. This may be enough to endear him to immature film students because of the rebellious nature of youth. This sentiment is usually reinforced when they learn that he is a life-long Communist, which is like, so cool! (No traditional bourgeois filmmaking principles like "Telling a Story" for Godard. How liberating!) Unfortunately, it is also the folly of youth to believe that New & Different is somehow synonymous with Innovative & Better - a notion has clouded the judgement of many seemingly rational people old enough to know better when it comes to their assessment of what constitutes Art. Watching early works of Godard like "À Bout de Soufflé" and "Pierrot le Fou" reminds me of a child exclaiming, Mommy, Daddy - look at me! Look at what I'm doing." Nonetheless there are actually two good reasons why you should bite the bullet (or take a stiff drink) and watch "Breathless." The first is the very 50s-ish jazzy score by Martial Solal, which totally fits the film and captures the atmosphere in the disjointed and somewhat crazy scenario (such as it is.) The second reason is the incomparable Jean Seberg. You will become captivated by her as soon as she appears on the screen, but then you will fall hopelessly in love with this utterly charming gamin Américaine when you see her slowly walking on the Champs-Elysees calling out, "New York Herald Tribune" with newspapers that she is trying to sell bundled in her arm.Godard famously said, "All that you need to make a good film is a girl and a gun." At least he was half right.

Still fresh as ever four viewings later, this debut feature from Jean- Luc Godard shows the acclaimed French director at his most experimental while still spinning a half decent story (the same cannot be said of all of his subsequent efforts). A key piece of dialogue crops up around halfway through as lead actress Jean Seberg tells the car thief protagonist played by Jean-Paul Belmondo that she cannot see anything beneath his face, no matter how hard she looks. Belmondo is a man who has modeled himself on the heroes of film noir (twisting his face to match Bogart's face in a photo at one point) and has lost his true identity in a near fantasy existence; Godard's inclusion of gun sound effects as Belmondo imagines firing his gun from his moving car hint at an overactive imagination. Godard's use of jump cuts is also indicative of fragmented thinking. Fascinating as this all may be, 'À Bout de Soufflé' misses the mark for a top tier Godard effort. It is not even of his five best films as it does not spin as tight a narrative as something such as 'Contempt'. The scenes in Seberg's hotel room run too long and as appealing as Belmondo's non-urgency in fleeing the country may be, the film misses the opportunity for thrills and suspense. It also debatable how much sense Seberg's decision near the end makes. There is, however, no flawing the film's music, a mix of different moody styles for a mixed up world in which Belmondo feels many different emotions, and the way we get inside the mind of the film noir-influenced protagonist is superb. Godard's cameo is lots of fun too.

ridiculous, false (not a single emotion is sensed), repetition of cliché senseless sentences, stupid plot, the only average scene is the last one; the only reason it got a success in the 1960s is a sheepish tendency to follow blindly the intellectual fashion of that time; i just saw it 40 years after the 1st time and had a very hard time to stay until the end; the French Nouvelle Vague does not match any of the contemporaneous high quality movies made by the other people; any Japanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Swedish or British (not to mention Hitch and American classics) great movie of the fifties is worth 1.000 Godards