Breathless aka À bout de souffle (1960)

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Writer: François Truffaut (story)
Stars: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger

There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du cinéma. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured cinema would never be the same.