Friday, October 19, 2007

In movie high school, there are the musicals hanging out in the band room, sports movies playing dodgeball in the gym, art films trying not to get stuffed in their lockers by the action flicks and, swaggering down the middle of the hall, coolest of them all, Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless." Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, it helped launch French new wave and changed moviemaking with its attitude and jump-cuts.

On Tuesday, Criterion will release a two-disc special edition ($39.95) with a restored high-definition digital transfer approved by director of photography Raoul Coutard; archival interviews with Godard, Belmondo and Seberg; new interviews with Coutard, assistant director Pierre Rissient and filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker; new video essays from filmmaker and critic Mark Rappaport ("Jean Seberg") and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum ("Breathless as Film Criticism"); and more. Considering that, as Fran¿ois Truffaut once famously said, "There is the cinema before Godard, and there is the cinema after Godard," it's a must-have for the true film buff.

-- Curt Fields