The phrase 'out of breath' is misplaced.
Out of breath after a brisk walk, the man reached home with his dog.
The job complete,....
I'll give you a couple of sentences, and you try to state the clauses and phrases in them:
Over twenty years ago, with "Faulkner, Modernism, and Film", the
conference first endeavored to tackle the question of what Faulkner and
film have to do with each other—with the broad concept of 'modernism' as an assumed common denominator.
That the conference is returning to
that theme—and to its (now implicit) common denominator—is indicative
of major advances both in Faulkner and film studies during the last two
decades.