A bout de souffle - the cast list

A bout de souffle - the cast list

There are no cast or crew credits for A bout de souffle in the film itself, neither at the beginning nor the end. This has led to the compilation of cast lists on the basis of faces recognised or rumours repeated, cast lists that are full of obscurities and errors. The chief culprit is the IMDB, and this post is basically a corrective commentary on some of the entries in the cast list presented there:

I have also added some comments on the actors or on the names of their characters. Some of the information below was already presented in my slow crawl through A bout de souffle, here.

When Michel enunciates 'Patricia Franchini' she replies: 'I hate that name. I wish I was called Ingrid.' The implication is that Patricia is of Italian origin, but that she would prefer to be Swedish; Jean Seberg's father was in fact of Swedish origin. A further subtext might be that Jean Seberg, whose first role was Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger's 1957 film Saint Joan, might wish to be like Ingrid Bergman, who had played Joan of Arc in films by Victor Fleming (1948) and Roberto Rossellini (1954).

In certain quarters the ridiculous canard persists that the pseudonym used by Michel Poiccard is some kind of homage to the Hollywood cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, even though by 1959 this Kovacs had done nothing in cinema by which his name might be known. The name comes, much more simply, from that of the character Belmondo had just been playing in Chabrol's A double tour, shot between May and July 1959.

In Pierrot le fou a character played by Laszlo Szabo - who had played Laszlo Kovacs's friend Vlado in A double tour - calls himself Laszlo Kovacs.

This would still not be a homage to the cinematographer, whose first credit using his real name was for Psych-Out in 1968.

Unlike most other non-actors who appear in early New Wave films, novelist Daniel Boulanger is given a substantial role in this, his first film.

Philippe de Broca's Les Jeux de l'amour, which Boulanger scripted, began shooting mid-way through the shoot of A bout de souffle. Boulanger plays two cameo roles in that film, the driver of a Citroën DS and (disguised with a fake moustache) a dancer in a jazz dive:

1958

1959

In the novelisation by Claude Francolin, the name of the character played by Hanin is given as Karl Zumbach. Francolin's version is not authoritative but it does sometimes provide a useful guide.

The actor Van Doude's real name was Doude van Herwijnen, but he was always credited as just Van Doude. In A bout de souffle he plays a journalist not an actor, so does not play Himself. We could say, perhaps, that he plays a character who is also called Van Doude, but his character is never named in the film (Francolin's novelisation calls Van Doude and gives him a first name, James).

It is a New Wave habit to give a character the name of the actor playing the role, as in:

'Claudius Mansard, c'est vous?', asks Lazslo Kovacs, alias Michel Poiccard.

Mansard's first film rôle was in Louis Malle's Les Amants (1958). His name was misspelt in that film's credits:

This entry amounts to a confession of the IMDB's complete confusion. Liliane Dreyfus was Liliane David until she married in 1963, at which point, after eleven screen appearances, her film career more or less came to an end.

There is no reason for the A bout de souffle cast list to call her Liliane Dreyfus.

The two character names she is given derive, in the first case, from the assumption that the character has the same name as the actress - the already mentioned New Wave trope - even if she is not named at any point in the film. And the name 'Minouche' is based on a misreading of a moment towards the end of the film when Liliane recognises Michel, who is next to Patricia in the car she is driving. Patricia asks 'Who was that?' to which Michel simply replies 'Step on it, Minouche'. Minouche is then just a term he uses to address Patricia, and is not the name of the person who has just recognised him.

All of which doesn't explain why, further down in the IMDB cast list, someone called Liliane Robin is credited as playing Minouche:

There is no character called Minouche in the film, and Liliane Robin, an actress in the 1950s with even less of a career than Liliane David (only seven films) does not, as far as I can see, appear in A bout de souffle:

Liliane Robin in Le Printemps, L'automne et l'amour (1955)

Liliane Robin in Enigme aux Folies-Bergère (1959)

Michel Fabre is one of several 'Mac-Mahonien' cinephiles who appear or are reputed to appear in A bout de souffle, though his is by far the most substantial rôle. It is he whom Patricia shakes off by running into the Mac-Mahon cinema:

Melville's performance as the novelist Parvulesco is based on himself and on Vladimir Nabokov. The name comes from Jean Parvulesvo, a Romanian acquaintance of Godard's who would later become a successful novelist. Parvulesco made cameo appearances in Barbet Schroeder's Maîtresse (1975) and Eric Rohmer's L'Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque (1993):

Labarthe and Moreuil, the first two below, are the only 'journalists' in the Orly sequence I can identify, though Moreuil would be better credited as a photographer:

Of the other journalists mentioned by IMDB, I cannot see Philippe de Broca or Jean-Louis Richard here, and British character actor Raymond Huntley is definitely not in this sequence, nor anywhere else in the film.

Before teaming up with Polanski as scriptwriter, Brach worked in the press office at Twentieth-Century Fox in Paris, where Godard had also worked and where, I assume, they met.

Brach in A bout de souffle

Brach with Polanski in 1966

Neither soon-to-be director Philippe de Broca nor Cahiers du Cinéma critic Jean Douchet play journalists in A bout de souffle. They appear as witnesses to a road accident in which Jacques Rivette - not mentioned by the IMDB - plays the corpse.
Douchet is the man in the dark suit, De Broca is the man in the light jacket.

Producer and director José Bénazéraf had an office in the same building as A bout de souffle producer Georges de Beauregard, on the rue de Cérisoles. The white Ford Thunderbird stolen by Poiccard was Bénazéraf's own car:

Cahiers du Cinéma critic Domarchi is robbed by Poiccard in the toilets of a café. Nothing in his demeanour suggests he has been drinking, but some French-language cast lists also identify him as a drunk, 'un pochard'. This may be a detail originating in Francolin's novelisation.

Louiguy was a composer for films whose only screen appearances are as himself in two early '50s films by Sacha Guitry:

La Vie d'un honnête homme (1953)

La Poison (1951)

Louiguy did have a strong connection with the company behind A bout de souffle, having composed the music for Ramuntcho and Pêcheur d'Islande, both films produced by Georges de Beauregard in 1959 - and both films were shot, like A bout de souffle, by Raoul Coutard.

But I cannot find anyone in A bout de souffle who looks like this man:

Michel Mourlet and Jacques Lourcelles (pseudonym Raymond Ravanbaz) were, like Michel Fabre, Mac-Mahoniens, and Mourlet's credit tells us he is in the audience at the Mac-Mahon when Patricia escapes from Fabre, playing a policeman. There are several people in the audience at the cinema, all of whom may well be as yet unidentified Mac-Mahoniens, but the problem is that the sequence is so dark that no one is recognisable. I have lightened the image here but that isn't much help:

For what it's worth I think Mourlet is the seated man, just off centre.

Guido Orlando was a famous Italo-American publicist, author of the Confessions of a Scoundrel in 1954. In A bout de souffle he plays Van Doude's chief at the New York Herald Tribune:

I have no idea who this Madame Paul is, but her name appears, unquestioned, in almost every cast listing for A bout de souffle. If I had to guess I'd say she was the usherette at the Mac-Mahon.

Serguine was a novelist in his mid-twenties who in 1959 had just published his first book, Les Fils du roi, with Gallimard. He would later be known for his Eloge de la fessée. He was an associate of the Mac-Mahoniens.

He is much older in the photograph, right, and I haven't been able to match him to anyone in A bout de souffle.

I have not been able to identify anyone in the film with journalist and film historian Jacques Siclier. He could be one of these two unidentified journalists at Orly, right, but I don't see much resemblance:

Virginie Ullmann plays the Swedish model in whose apartment Michel and Patricia spend the night.

She also appeared in Roger Vadim's Les Liaisons dangereuses, but I think she was a model rather than an actress.

This production still of her, taken by Raymond Cauchetier in the A bout de souffle apartment, was recently sold on eBay as a portrait of Liliane David:

Emile Villion was the owner of the Mac-Mahon. This is him, I should think, outside the cinema:

In the light of the above, I have suggested a few changes to the IMDB. If they make them I'll suggest a few more.

A few other names appear in other cast listings for A bout de souffle. I've mentioned Jacques Rivette as the accident victim. Noël Simsolo identifies Lila Herman [aka Lila Lakshmanan], assistant editor on the film, as Tolmatchoff's co-worker at the travel agency, and her husband, future filmmaker Jean Herman, as the soldier who asks for a light:

A certain René Bernard appears in cast lists, but I don't know who he is, neither in the film nor in life.

There remains a considerable number of people in the film, some with substantial roles, whose names don't appear in any cast list and whose contributions have, accordingly, been forgotten. Here are some of these, in order of appearance.

The woman who helps Michel steal a car in Marseille:

The couple whose car is stolen in Marseille:

The hitchhikers Michel declines to pick up:

The policeman Michel kills:

The man who gives Michel a lift into Paris:

The cyclist from whom Michel buys a newspaper. I think that's Luc Moullet:

The caretaker at Patricia's hotel and the policeman who walks past:

The man reading behind the counter at the travel agency:

Patricia's co-worker, selling the Herald Tribune:

The ambulant portraitist (he appears again towards the end of the film):

The woman selling Cahiers du Cinéma:

The man driving the car that knocks over Jacques Rivette:

The man standing watching the accident (he looks a bit like Roger Vadim):

The Jean Seberg lookalike who looks at them on the boulevard des Italiens:

The desk clerk at Patricia's hotel:

The man sitting near Patricia at the terrace of a café on the quai Saint Michel:

The man whose Triumph TR2 Michel attenpts to steal:

The man selling France Soir outside the New York Herald Tribune offices on the rue de Berri:

The man Patricia is talking to as she leaves the Herald Tribune offices:

The woman whose skirt Michel lifts up:

The man reading a newspaper in the Herald Tribune offices:

The man mopping the floor in the Herald Tribune offices:

I think the man with the mop appears a year later as the barman Marcel in Une femme est une femme, and two years later as a passerby in Vivre sa vie: