Trivia / Breathless

For the Film

• Breakthrough Hit: For Jean-Luc Godard.
• Creator Couple: Jean Seberg's husband François Moreuil appears as one of the journalists at Orly.
• Enforced Method Acting: To give a more detached, spontaneous quality, Jean-Luc Godard fed the actors their lines as scenes were being filmed.
• No Budget: Jean-Luc Godard couldn't afford a dolly, so he pushed the cinematographer around in a wheelchair through many scenes of the film. He got the idea from Jean-Pierre Melville, who had used the same low-budget technique in Bob Le Flambeur and Le Silence de la mer.
• Referenced by...:
  • The finale of the movie heavily informed David Byrne's performances of "Psycho Killer" during Talking Heads' Speaking in Tongues tour in 1983, as captured in Stop Making Sense the following year.
  • The third episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has a character program his robot to recite the script of this movie to help sell his delusion that she's sapient and in love with him. The last lines she speaks, however, aren't from the film...
• Star-Making Role: For Jean-Paul Belmondo.
• Uncredited Role: Aside from the film's title, the distribution visa number, and the dedication to Monogram Pictures, there are no other credits or titles on this film. The entire cast and crew is uncredited.
• Wag the Director: Jean-Luc Godard wanted Patricia to rifle through the dying Michel's pockets, but Jean Seberg refused to play the scene that way.
• What Could Have Been: Jean-Pierre Melville's cameo was originally written for Roberto Rossellini.
• Write Who You Know: Goddard based Michel on screenwriter Paul Gégauff, who was known as a swaggering seducer of women.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Despite reports to the contrary, Jean-Luc Godard did not shoot the film without a script; however, he did not have a finished script at the beginning, instead writing scenes in the morning and filming them that day.

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For the Amiga Video Game

• What Could Have Been: Due to the game suffering from a rushed production schedule and budget problems, a lot of enemy designs were cut from the final game, many which are actually an improvement and not make the final game just another run-of-the-mill Doom clone. The scrapped details can be seen in screenshots extracted off the demon version.