A Bout de Souffle 1960 French Grande FIlm Poster, Clement Hurel

We adore this original first-year-of-release country-of-origin poster for Jean-Luc Godard's seminal New Wave classic A Bout de Souffle (Breathless). Arguably one of the best films ever made, and we think Hurel's bold and beautiful design deserves the same acclaim. It simply leaves us breathless.

In A Bout de Souffle, Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as a wandering criminal named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend Patricia. The film was Godard's first feature-length work and represented Belmondo's breakthrough as an actor.

A Bout de Souffle is an influential example of French New Wave (nouvelle vague) cinema. Along with François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour, both released a year earlier, it brought international attention to new styles of French filmmaking.

▼France has a long and rich history in poster design that dates back to the mid-19th century.... CLICK TO READ MORE

One of the most influential figures in the development of vintage posters was the French poster artist Jules Chéret. Around 1866, Chéret is credited with producing the first colour lithograph posters, using a technique he refined from the black and white process first invented by German actor and playwright Alois Senefelder in 1798. Cheret's three stone lithographic process allowed artists to achieve every colour in the rainbow using just three stones - usually red, yellow and blue - printed in careful registration.

The Parisian artists, headed by Cheret and including masters Steinlen, Willette, Grasset, Bonnard, Forain and, last but certainly not least, Toulouse-Lautrec's vibrant and eye-catching designs influenced, in part, by Japanese Woodcuts brought a new level of visual appeal to the streets of Paris and, in turn, established the poster as an art form.

The Belle Époque (Beautiful Era), a period of peace and frivolity in France from the late 19th to the early 20th century (1870-1914), played a significant role in the continued advancement of poster design. This era coincided with economic growth and the rise of a new middle class with disposable income and leisure time. It was during this time that the poster craze took hold in France, with posters being used for advertising various products, events, and entertainment.

Over the decades that followed from these auspicious beginnings French poster design continued to flourish and designers from around the world followed suit in experimenting with poster design for advertisements for cultural events, travel, film, food and drink and more.

This original vintage movie poster has been professionally linen-backed and is sized 46 3/4 x 63 inches (plus a a couple more inches for the linen). It will be sent rolled (unframed).

• Year: 1960
  
• Poster Type: French Grande
  
• Style: -
• Art By: Clement Hurel
  
• Rolled/Folded/Other: Rolled Linen-backed
  
• Condition: Near Mint
  
• Condition Details: originally folded as issued - now linen backed with just very light touch-up and ageing on folds. Superb condition.