At the time, Godard was living his dandyish Bohemian life, having only returned to Paris from Switzerland in 1956, and in the middle of writing for Cahiers and Arts, and trying to make any type of film in any way. He wasn’t a catch, Collette was. Marc Allégret wasn’t a nobody. However, Collette is known primarily for two roles in Godard’s first two notable shorts: All the Boys Are Called Patrick and Charlotte and Her Boyfriend, both shot 1957-58. It was, in fact, Collette, who in Sois belle et tais-toi, introduced Godard to her fellow actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. 

In both these films, Collette plays Charlotte, a slightly coquettish, pretty, laughing type. In Charlotte, she acts alongside Belmondo and Gerard Blain (who plays her new lover). Godard so liked her and Belmondo’s chemistry that he planned to carry the duo from Charlotte and Her Boyfriend into Breathless, offering the role then called “Betty” (From Truffaut’s draft) to Collette. Originally, the character is barely there, minimal, almost mute, just like Charlotte is in her shorts. 

But Georges de Beauregard says no. He wants a star. He wants an American. And Godard agrees, and from then on imagines Jean Seberg, a vivid blonde like Collette, for the role. The relationship itself ended very shortly after this, but it appears the hurt had simmered for some time. Godard had written a cruel criticism of Marc Allégret in 1958 in Arts, which she’d taken offence at, and when Allégret offered her a role in Les Affreux in the summer of 1959, she accepted and left; after all, Godard had already replaced her with Jean Seberg.

It is Collette’s voice you can hear on the original trailer of Breathless in a voice-over with Godard. A collage of playful words. “The pretty girl / The nasty boy.” When exactly this was recorded is hard to tell, as it must have been recorded post-break-up, but I can’t find any record of a date. 

It seems neither expected the break to be final, but it was. Godard shot Breathless slightly heartbroken (he insisted on filming part of the movie in room 12 at the Hotel de Suede, where he had courted Collette). However, they didn’t get back together. Godard found Anna Karina and got married and became one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, and Collette… didn’t.

Collette’s career never really broke out. She stopped acting shortly after her break-up in 1960/61, then resumed briefly in 1966-68, then that was it. The only director who seemed attached to her being Pierre Kast, who cast her in La Morte-Saison des amours and Images pour Baudelaire. Other than that, her career simply ended. Her ‘Comeback,’ if you want to call it that, in the 66-68 period, accounts for Drôle de jeu, a Kast-Pollet film, a New-Wave influenced erotic Dutch film by Nikolai van der Heyde, Een ochtend van zes weken, and then as an erotic dream girl in Martin Scorsese’s debut feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door? 

It is tempting to connect her appearance there as a homage to her work with Godard, after all, Scorsese’s career is indebted to the French New Wave. That’s the romantic claim, the one people make. However, this seems more like romantic hindsight. Her part in the film was a sex scene demanded by exploitation distributor Joseph Brenner for Scorsese to add to the film a year after its debut. Scorsese, who was in Amsterdam shooting commercials, almost certainly didn’t go out of his way to find Godard’s muse; he wanted a pretty girl and quick. Scorsese then smuggled the film back into the country, by his account, literally in his raincoat.

It’s not a homage, it’s a coincidence. It’s not poignant as a tribute; it’s poignant that the girl who influenced and nearly played the lead of Breathless was a pound of flesh on tap for an exploitation film no one really even saw. It’s bleak, but it’s much more likely than anything structured, given Scorsese was a desperate and broke 25-year-old.

Collette retired in 1968. In London, according to some reports. She never made another film or public appearance that I could find.