As part of our sale, we are also presenting the only known manuscript of the legendary À bout de souffle by Jean-Luc Godard, from the collection of the film’s producer, Georges de Beauregard. Godard’s very first feature film, À bout de souffle also marked the breakthrough of Jean-Paul Belmondo as an actor and elevated his co-star Jean Seberg to the status of fashion icon.

À bout de souffle: The Manuscript by Jean-Luc Godard

Before the Legend: Unpublished Drawings of Le Petit Prince

Also featured in the sale is the manuscript of André Gide’s Journal, from the collection of Pierre Amrouche and Suzanne Molbert-Amrouche.

The Only Autograph Manuscript of Gide’s Journal in Private Hands

The Only Manuscript of Gide’s Journal in Private Hands

Paris

Director | Head of Department

Anne Heilbronn

Director | Specialist

Patricia de Fougerolle

Benoit Puttemans

Sale Coordinator | Books

Fanny Gras

Meet our Specialists

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Sotheby’s is delighted to announce the upcoming Livres et Manuscrits Auction, taking place in Paris from 4 to 18 June.

Livres & Manuscrits – De Grolier à Godard 

This unique 72-page document, estimated between €400,000 and €600,000, includes part of the screenplay and dialogues, the storyboard for the trailer, as well as various documents and photographs from the film, as transcribed by Godard himself. Among them are the dramatic opening sequence, the scenes in Marseille, the return to Paris, the iconic moment where Jean Seberg sells the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-Élysées, and the altercation between Jean-Paul Belmondo and a motorcyclist.

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 <blockquote>Qu’est-ce que c’est dégueulasse?</blockquote>
 
 
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 </div>
 </div> This iconic line from À bout de souffle is known even by those who haven’t seen the film. The death of Belmondo on rue Campagne-Première, near the legendary building where Man Ray once lived, remains etched in memory. Lying on the ground, dying, Michel realizes he’s been betrayed by Jean Seberg (Patricia), the young American student he’s fallen for. “Tu es vraiment une dégueulasse”, he tells her before dying. Standing over him in her striped dress, she looks into the camera and replies with the now-famous line: ”Qu’est-ce que c’est dégueulasse” ? as she runs her finger over her lips, just as Michel had done repeatedly throughout the film. The camera cuts to a close-up before the word “fin” appears on screen. At 29, Godard directs his first film — a gangster story in the American style. À bout de souffle would go on to become one of the cult films of the Nouvelle Vague, alongside Truffaut’s Les 400 coups, enthusiastically received at Cannes in 1959. Filming took place quickly, between August 17 and September 15, 1959, based on a brief synopsis by François Truffaut, inspired by a news item that made headlines in 1952. Riding the success of Les 400 coups, Truffaut agreed to hand over the story to Godard and supported him with the film’s producer, Georges de Beauregard.

“I had written the first scene (Jean Seberg on the Champs-Élysées) and had lots of notes for each following scene,” said Godard. “At one point, I panicked and thought: this is overwhelming, I’m stopping. Then I thought it through: in one day, if you do it right, you can shoot about ten shots. Instead of figuring everything out in advance, I’ll just figure it out right before. If you know where you’re going, it should be possible. It’s not improvisation — it’s last-minute precision.” Shot with a handheld camera, featuring dialogue written at the last minute and rehearsed just once by the actors before filming in a single take, the scenes were recorded without sound and later dubbed in postproduction. Godard used innovative techniques like jump cuts and deliberate continuity errors, directing actors with short, minimal instructions. À bout de souffle became what Martin Scorsese would later call a “revolutionary” film. Indeed, Godard shocked audiences and defied all conventions, creating what Truffaut called a “cinematic cry.” In May 1967, Truffaut wrote that À bout de souffle was a decisive turning point in the history of cinema — akin to Citizen Kane in 1941. “Godard blew up the system — he threw cinema into chaos.” With a radical break from everything that had come before, Godard reinvented and rejuvenated the language of cinema. Starting from a conventional story, he gave the impression of discovering film techniques for the first time. “À bout de souffle was the kind of film where anything was possible — it was in its very nature. Whatever people did could be part of the film. That’s even where I started from.” This cinematic UFO, with its worldwide success, would go on to become one of the greatest myths in film history.