This unique manuscript by Godard could change everything…

It’s a piece of history that was thought to have disappeared. And it’s reappearing at a time when cinema is seeking to rediscover its roots: from June 4 to 18, 2025, Sotheby’s Paris will be auctioning the original handwritten screenplay of “Breathless”, the only remnant of this founding film of the Nouvelle Vague.

A handwritten relic of creative chaos

Seventy pages scribbled, crossed out and adjusted at the last minute by Jean-Luc Godard himself capture not just a film, but a method. The original plot imagined by François Truffaut was taken up, then deconstructed by Godard, who shot Breathless in 1959 as one would write a nervous poem, to the rhythm of one’s breath.

This manuscript, the only copy found in the estate of producer Georges de Beauregard, contains scenes that have become cult favorites: Jean Seberg selling the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-Élysées, Jean-Paul Belmondo with his rebellious look and cigarette in his mouth. A free youth, filmed in a hurry.

A cult object for a cult Godard film

This is no mere relic. It’s a living piece, accompanied by photographs, filming objects and unpublished documents linked to the film. For Anne Heilbronn, head of books at Sotheby’s Paris, it’s a shock: “I wanted to cry. She recalls the raw emotion of discovering dialogues and notes unseen since 1960.

The manuscript, with its deliberate disorder, embodies what Godard called last-minute fine-tuning. No gratuitous chaos, but an instinctive strategy. Truffaut summed it up this way in 1967: “Godard has broken the system, he has made a mess of the cinema.”

This manuscript of “Breathless” is more than an object: it’s a manifesto.
And if you’re fascinated by the tangible traces of genius, don’t miss this exceptional sale at Sotheby’s Paris.

Find out more here.

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