Paper Size: 30 x 40 cm
Edition of 20

 
Each photograph is signed and numbered by the artist.


Seberg's first day of work on A bout de souffle (Breathless) with Belmondo (left) and Godard, at a cafe on the Champs-Elysees, August 24, 1959.

Jean-Paul Belmondo had already been working on the film for a week, and was now used to Jean-Luc Godard's unconventional methods. However, Seberg was used to the large-scale productions of Otto Preminger, with whom she worked on Saint Joan (1957) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958), where she was surrounded by an army of technicians, assistants and cameras, with each second of the script kept rigidly.

Seberg now found herself virtually alone with Jean-Luc Godard in a cafe on the Champs-Elysees, with no script or prior direction. Godard kept a small notebook in which he noted some vague ideas, but not a word of the dialogue, which he was to impart during shooting.

Seberg initially found this transition difficult, as evidenced by a recent interview with Raymond Cauchetier in which he describes her thus:

Seberg was simply charming. After the shock of the early days she was perfectly suited. With her short hair, inherited from Preminger's Joan of Arc, she created a style that is still in fashion fifty years later. It was the beginning of her romance with Romain Gary, and she exuded happiness.