The most challenging aspect involved the black and white sections of the film, which dissolve back and forth with the color sequences. The black and white duplicate sections that wipe to color were printed on color stock and special printing and light changes were used to minimize the differences. All the optical tracks were considered substandards because of overuse and lacking in the dynamic qualities exhibited in the original track. The final restored magnetic printmaster was created from several different elements, including separate music and effects tracks.

Grover Crisp

Jean-Luc Godard conceived Jean Seberg’s character in A Bout de souffle as an extension of her role in this Otto Preminger film: the restless teenage daughter of a bored, decaying playboy (David Niven), she tries to undermine what might be her father’s last chance for happiness, a romance with an Englishwoman (Deborah Kerr). Arguably, this is Preminger’s masterpiece: working with a soapy script by Arthur Laurents (by way of Françoise Sagan’s novel), Preminger turns the melodrama into a meditation on motives and their ultimate unknowability. Long takes and balanced Scope compositions are used to bind the characters together; Preminger uses the wide screen not to expand the spectacle, but to narrow and intensify the drama. Photographed in Technicolor (apart from a black-and-white prologue and epilogue), mainly on the Riviera.

Dave Kehr