Short answers, pulled from the story.
Breathless was written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard and was his first feature-length film. It starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, and represented Belmondo's breakthrough as an actor.
The original French title is À bout de souffle. The film was released in France in 1960 and drew over two million viewers upon its initial release.
Breathless was loosely based on a newspaper article about Michel Portail, who in November 1952 stole a car to visit his sick mother in Le Havre and ended up killing a motorcycle officer named Grimberg. Portail's American journalist girlfriend, Beverly Lynette, was the basis for the character Patricia.
Filming ran for 23 days, from the 17th of August to the 12th of September, 1959. The shoot was done without permits, using a hand-held camera, and Godard wrote dialogue in an exercise book on the day of filming.
Michel's dying words, "C'est vraiment dégueulasse," have been translated differently across releases. The word "dégueulasse" can mean "disgusting," "scumbag," or carry connotations of nausea; different subtitled versions render it as "It's disgusting, really," "You're a real scumbag," or "Makes me want to puke."
The British Film Institute's Sight and Sound magazine has included Breathless in every decennial critics poll since 1992, when it ranked 22nd. By 2012 it had reached 13th in the Critics' Top Films of All Time, and in 2022 it ranked 38th in the same poll.