Latest news with #ÀBoutdeSouffle
Mint
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Cannes 2025: ‘Nouvelle Vague' is a winsome homage to Godard
'Reality is not continuity!" exclaims Jean-Luc Godard during the making of À Bout de Souffle, as a script supervisor attempts to remove a coffee cup that hadn't been there in the previous shot. Correction: exclaims the actor playing Godard in Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater's film about the making of the 1959 French New Wave classic. (As if all this wasn't meta enough, try watching it at the Cannes Film Festival in a theatre full of critics and filmmakers.) It's a bold move to tell a story about the making of one of the most influential—and most studied—films in cinema history, particularly one whose place in the canon marks a disruption of all the filmmaking conventions that came before it. Add to that the notion of an American director assembling this homage to one of France's biggest icons and things could go horribly wrong… if it weren't for the fact that it was Linklater behind the camera. Over the last 30 years he has challenged the conventions of filmmaking in his own ways, most notably with his Before trilogy of films, all shot nine years apart to allow for the story (co-written with his actors) to naturally age and mature with time. His other speciality is capturing the bravado and insouciance of youth, which we see here in the form of a 29-year-old film-critic-turned-filmmaker who made his very first film in a span of 20 days without much of a plan. Experimental and unstructured as Godard's style may have been, Linklater's Nouvelle Vague is not. But it's also not trying to be. 'You can't imitate Godard. You'd fail," he said at a press conference at Cannes. Meticulously plotted and rehearsed, the film has a beginning, middle and end—in that order. (Another deviation from the Godard school of action.) It opens with Godard bemoaning how his fellow film critics (such as Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut) at Cahiers du Cinema made their directorial forays before him. Spurred into action by the fear of being left behind, Godard gets producer Georges de Beauregard to fund his debut feature based on a rough story outline written by Truffaut, and casts Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg as the leads. Most of Nouvelle Vague is dedicated to the production process of the film, and how Godard bucked convention at every turn. Take for example: showing up to shoot without a script, avoiding rehearsals so as to capture his actors' instincts, choosing to have key action sequences take place off-screen. Though much of this is already well known and documented, what sells this particular peek behind the scenes is the cast, made up almost entirely of unfamiliar faces. Guillaume Marbeck is an incredible find; the unknown French actor is the spitting image of Godard, aided by the signature dark sunglasses that don't come off for even a moment. Hollywood actress Zoey Deutch nails Seberg's off-kilter American-accented French, and another unknown French actor Aubry Dullin rounds out the trio with his playful (and equally charismatic) Belmondo. Shot on 35mm film in 1:37 Academy ratio, the black-and-white film was shot to look like the films of that era, meaning it also does not feature any camera movements or stylistic choices that didn't exist prior to when Breathless (as it's known to English-speaking audiences) was made. 'In making this film, I felt like I had erased my own history," said Linklater. 'I was going back to being in my late 20s making my first film. I also had to erase cinema history after 1959. So I was going back in time personally and cinematically." The film keeps up a zippy pace throughout, though its periodic pauses to introduce seminal characters of that time—Agnes Varda, Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Bresson and the like—start to wear thin after a while. Some of the strongest moments are when Godard butts heads with his producer, who is becoming increasingly worried that his director seems to be eschewing a formal narrative in favour of creating an improvisational rhythm all his own, and also has a penchant for shooting only when inspiration strikes (even if that's just two hours a day). Nothing about Linklater's film is as audacious as Godard's debut but it has a winsome exuberance that's quite infectious. Perhaps where the film will be most successful is among young audiences unfamiliar with these French New Wave pioneers, and with cinephiles for whom films about films have always been catnip. It may not matter that Nouvelle Vague isn't doing anything novel. It's made with such sincerity and such a reverence for not just the craft of filmmaking but for the leap of faith required to undertake such a thing that it's impossible not to be won over. Back to the forest Exactly 56 years after Satyajit Ray made Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest), his beautifully observed film about complex social dynamics between a group of young friends and strangers, a restoration of the classic was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. The process of its meticulous 4K restoration was initiated by Wes Anderson, an avowed Ray fan, in his capacity as a board member on Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation. In his opening speech at the Cannes screening, Anderson said, 'Days and Nights in the Forest is one of the special gems among (Ray's) many treasures. I first saw it 25 years ago on a very strangely translated, blurry, scratchy, pirated DVD from a little Bollywood shop in New Jersey. And I hope you'll enjoy it tonight, perfectly restored, as much as I did then." The film's stars Sharmila Tagore and Simi Garewal were in attendance at the screening alongside Shivendra Singh Dungarpur from India's Film Heritage Foundation, which supported the restoration process in collaboration with Janus Films, The Criterion Collection and the Golden Globe Foundation. Recalling the sweltering summertime shoot, Tagore shares, 'It was so hot we could only shoot from 5.30-9am and then again from 3-6pm. The rest of the time was just adda, it's a Bengali word which means bonding and making friends…Sadly, Simi and I are the only survivors (from the cast); everybody else has passed on. So I will see my old friends on the screen and relive those lovely moments." And in her closing words of thanks, Garewal said to Anderson and Dungarpur: 'You've not only restored this film, you've made it immortal." Pahull Bains is a freelance film critic and culture writer. Also read: India's bars get creative with zero-proof drinks
Time Out
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Nouvelle Vague
If being locked in the Criterion Closet for a couple of hours sounds like heaven, Richard Linklater has made the perfect film for you. It's a playful, black-and-white making-of story for Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave classic Breathless – 'À Bout de Souffle' to the cinephile crowd – that captures a revolutionary moment in cinema history with reverence and a touch of cheek. You'll probably know movies that backdrop the story: Godard's 1960 crime drama Breathless is the key text, of course, but Truffaut's Cannes premiere of The 400 Blows is also recreated with a wink to contemporary Cannes-goers, and Linklater offers access-all-areas visits to the sets of Robert Bresson's Pickpocket and Jean-Pierre Melville's classic noir Bob le Flambeur too. But chronology is king here. When he's introduced, coolly intellectual behind his ever-present shades, Godard (played with distracted charisma by Parisian photographer Guillaume Marbeck) has yet to put someone else's money where his sizeable mouth is. The French New Wave has begun and his fellow critics at film mag Cahiers du Cinéma, including Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, and his best pal François Truffaut, have begun to establish themselves as filmmakers. Godard is in danger of being left behind, a kind of chic troll snarking from the sidelines. But as Godard famously said, all you need to make a film is a gun and a girl. His opportunity comes via the sponsorship of his soon-to-be long-suffering producer Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst). Breathless, of course, features both gun and girl: newcomer Jean-Paul Belmondo's hard-bitten but boyish outlaw has the former; pixie-cropped Hollywood starlet Jean Seberg is the effervescent American newspaper vendor he sweeps up in his wake. It'll have you queuing at your local repertory cinema as soon as the credits roll Linklater cleverly homages Godard's style with handheld cameras, unsynced sound, choppy editing and scratchy celluloid, all framed in the same boxy 1:37 aspect ratio as Breathless. His cast of first-timers is impressive, too. Aubry Dullin is fabulous as Belmondo, the angelic ex-boxer whose guilelessness lends his bandit a disarming quality. And like Godard, Linklater casts a more established actor, Zoey Deutch (Everybody Wants Some!!), in the Seberg role. It may be a facsimile of the original stars' on-screen chemistry, but there's real spark as the pair try to cope with their director's abstractions and loathing of scripted dialogue. There is, of course, a script behind all this – a warm and witty one by Holly Gent and Vince Palmo – as well as filming permits and financing and all the things that Godard was railing against when he made Breathless. Maybe that's why Nouveau Vague lacks the same anarchic urgency as the film it's homaging, and why in Linklater's filmography, Boyhood might be the film with more 'Godard' in it. But for devoted filmlovers, Nouvelle Vague is a must-see – a joyful homage to the art of cinema that'll have you queuing at your local repertory cinema as soon as the credits roll.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jean-Luc Godard's Handwritten ‘Breathless' Manuscript to Be Auctioned by Sotheby's
Jean-Luc Godard's legacy lives on, and now, even fans can own a piece of it. The late auteur, who died in 2022, made his feature directorial debut with 'Breathless,' also known as 'À Bout de Souffle.' The iconic 1960 film ushered in the French New Wave and propelled its stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg to fame. The film follows an American student (Seberg) in Paris who loves a dangerous criminal (Belmondo) obsessed with Humphrey Bogart. The duo later go on the run. More from IndieWire Who Wants Sundance? Salt Lake, Boulder, and Cincinnati Make Their Pitch 'Coco 2' in the Works for Pixar, with Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina Returning to Direct The only known (and previously unseen) handwritten partial manuscript for 'Breathless' by Godard is being sold at auction by the family of 'Breathless' producer Georges de Beauregard, who also worked with François Truffaut. The auction will be held by Sotheby's Paris, with bidding beginning online from June 4 to 18. This is the first time the manuscript will be offered for sale. There is an estimate of €400,000 – 600,000 as an opening bid, as part of Sotheby's Paris online auction of books and manuscripts. The lot will also include a number of photographs from Beauregard's archive, a further insight into a golden age of French cinema. The manuscript comprises 70 pages, including scene synopses and dialogue. Per Sotheby's, the scenes include the dramatic opening sequence, the scenes in Marseille, the drive back to Paris, Seberg's character Patricia selling the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-Élysées, Belmondo's Michel entering the telephone booth and the altercation with the motorcyclist, and the famous final sentence uttered by Seberg's character ('Qu'est-ce que c'est dégueulasse?'). The film's original trailer is also mapped out in Godard's hand. 'At the age of 29, Godard directed his first film, an American-style gangster story that was to become one of the cult films of the New Wave,' Anne Heilbronn, head of books and manuscripts, Sotheby's Paris, said in a press statement. 'Without the tenacity of his producer Beauregard, who found it difficult to finance the film, it would never have seen the light of day. This rare manuscript brings together these two of the great forces behind the Nouvelle Vague, in a historic document that captures the birth of one of France's greatest cinematic exports.' Manuscripts for Godard's films are exceptionally rare, as Sotheby's is promoting, due to the director's avant-garde working style. 'Breathless' didn't even have a full synopsis or script, as Godard instead would write dialogue on each day of the shoot. The written records were also later often destroyed. The feature was filmed on location from August 17 to September 15, 1959, and released in March 1960. 'When I made 'Breathless,' I thought I was doing something very precise,' Godard later said. 'I thought I was doing a thriller movie or a gangster movie, but when I saw the print for the first time, I discovered what I'd done was completely different from what I supposed.' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
The Independent
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Only known manuscript of Jean-Luc Godard's French New Wave classic to go on auction
The only known manuscript of Jean-Luc Godard 's highly influential 1960 film Breathless will go on auction at Sotheby's in June, the auction house has announced. Godard's feature-length debut, whose French title is À Bout de Souffle, is considered one of the most important films in cinema history for helping usher in the French New Wave, which introduced a slick and innovative style of filmmaking. The crime drama also created stars out of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, the latter of which became a fashion icon thanks to the role. Breathless follows a wanted criminal who tries to convince an American student to run away with him, and is a favourite of notable directors including Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan. An English language remake, starring Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky, was released in 1983. Godard's previously unseen and rare manuscript of the film, which consists of 70 pages of every iconic moment and quote, will be placed on auction courtesy of the family of the film's producer Georges de Beauregard. The document also contains a detailed breakdown of the film's trailer as well as a number of photographs from De Beauregard's archive, a further insight into the golden age of French cinema. The producer worked with many of the great French filmmakers of the period including Jean-Pierre Melville, Agnès Varda, Jacque Rivette, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Demy. Any sort of manuscript for Godard's films is considered to be extremely rare, a testament to his avant-garde working style. For example, À Bout de Souffle's manuscript does not contain a synopsis or script. Instead, Godard would write up the dialogue just moments before the actors would begin filming their scenes. His vision was for the actors to react as naturally as possible, and he would often even destroy these written records after they were used. De Beauregard, who died in 1984, first met Godard through another icon of French cinema, François Truffaut. The producer was convinced to work with Godard, who was a complete unknown at this point, after reading a loosely-written four-page synopsis of the film, penned by Truffaut and fellow director Claude Chabrol. Godard, whose other landmark films include Alphaville and Pierrot le Fou, died in 2022, aged 91. The lot will be placed on sale for the first time, with an estimate of €400,000 –600,000, as part of Sotheby's Paris online auction of books and manuscripts. Bidding will be open from 4-18 June.
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Only known script of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless to be auctioned online
The only known script for Jean-Luc Godard's seminal New Wave film Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) will be auctioned later this year after coming to light for the first time in more than 60 years. About 70 pages of Godard's handwritten notes and synopses of some of the most famous scenes, including the movie's dramatic opening, were discovered in the estate of the celebrated producer Georges de Beauregard. Breathless, which follows the doomed affair between an American student in Paris (Jean Seberg) and her hoodlum boyfriend who is wanted for gunning down a police officer (Jean-Paul Belmondo), is a keystone of France's Nouvelle Vague movement that shook the cinema world, including Hollywood. Godard's innovative method of working means that scripts of his films are rare. He shunned formal scripts and liked to write dialogue the night before a shoot, to encourage actors to behave naturally. He also had a penchant for destroying written records. Anne Heilbronn, the head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby's Paris, which is auctioning the manuscript along with photographs and other items from De Beauregard's estate, admitted she was overcome with emotion when she saw the documents. 'I wanted to cry. It was an incredible shock to actually have this manuscript that is a record of the history of French and world cinema in my hands,' she said. 'À Bout de Souffle is an iconic film for the whole world and here we see part of the dialogue, the scenes, the trailer, for the first time since 1960. As far as we know, it is the only script of its kind.' The original outline for the story, based on a news event that enthralled France in 1952, had been written by Godard's friend and fellow New Wave director François Truffaut, who allowed him to develop the plot. De Beauregard, another of the movement's key figures, had met Godard through Truffaut, and made a leap of faith in agreeing to produce Breathless, the then unknown director's first full-length film. Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion Godard approached the shoot over the summer of 1959 with a documentarist's method, filming in the streets with a handheld camera and mostly with natural light. Having started with a precise screenplay for the first 14 minutes of action, he ditched it and decided to write each day's script the night before. As the dialogue was to be synchronised in post-production, he did not mind if the actors forgot lines they had often been given on the morning of the shoot, as they frequently did. Sotheby's says it is describing the manuscript as 'partial', not because anything is missing but because Godard did not submit a full synopsis and script to the ministry of culture's National Centre of Cinematography and Animated Pictures, as would have been normal at the time, and made much of it up as he went along. Godard explained his thinking in Cahiers du Cinéma in 1968. 'I had written the first scene [Jean Seberg on the Champs Elysées] and, for the rest, I had a huge number of notes corresponding to each scene. I said to myself, this is outrageous! I stopped everything. Then I thought about it … instead of finding something a long time before, I'll find it just before. When you know where you're going, it should be possible. It's not improvisation, it's last-minute fine-tuning.' In 1967, Truffaut wrote: 'The passing years confirm our certainty that À Bout de Souffle will have marked a decisive turning point in the history of cinema, as Citizen Kane did in 1940. Godard has shattered the system, he has made a mess of the cinema.' The manuscript, with an estimate of £350,000-£500,000, will be sold as part of Sotheby's online auction of books and manuscripts, open for bidding on 14-18 June. The single lot will include four original photographs of Godard and Seberg, a vintage contact sheet, and letters from Godard and the actor and director Roger Hanin, who appeared in the film, all from De Beauregard's archive. 'As someone who adores the cinema and is passionate about it, I can say it is one of the best film scripts I have ever held,' Heilbronn said.
