Alfred Hitchcock once described drama as being life with the dull bits cut out, and this idea is taken to its logical extreme in Jean-Luc Godard’s legendary À bout de souffle where conversations and movement are interrupted to push the action forward. These jump cuts were an afterthought, a way to shorten a film that was running too long in Godard’s eye, but represents a freshness and improvisational spirit that permeates everything in the film. The central relationship between Jean-Paul Belmondo’s small time crook Michel and the pixie-ish Jean Seberg as Patricia is revolutionary, informing the films that followed so completely that it’s nearly
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