A Bout De Souffle (aka Breathless) (1960)

A small time hood (Jean Paul Belmondo) steals a car and kills a policeman. While the police track him down, he pursues an American girl (Jean Seberg) living in Paris. Today, over 50 years since Jean Luc Godard's innovative masterpiece opened, perhaps it's difficult to remember what a blast of fresh air it was on the cinematic landscape but damn if it's not as fresh now as it was then. There's no real plot to speak of, it's just a series of moments. But what moments! Belmondo's aimless thug and Seberg's narcissistic mannequin drift through the film yet they're compelling. There's one terrific scene that defines their characters, a long scene in Seberg's bed. She wants to discuss Renoir and Faulkner, he just wants to get laid. It confirms her pretensions and his animal needs. They're not people one would be attracted to in real life, indeed we'd avoid them. But Godard's script (it's credited to Francois Truffaut but it's Godard all the way) lets us see the attraction of banal amorality. The film made a star out of Belmondo and it's easy to see why and he and Seberg have a playful chemistry. The inventive editing (it really broke new ground) is by Cecile Decugis and the free wheeling cinematography courtesy of Raoul Coutard (JULES AND JIM). With Daniel Boulanger and Jean Pierre Melville (yes, the director)