
It’s strangely fitting – and yet unexpected – how perfectly Godard’s first film captures his style. After sixty-five years, Breathless is firmly established as one of the most important and influential works of the 20th century. Though it hasn’t received quite as much formal recognition as Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (it never ranked among the top ten in Sight & Sound’s prestigious “Greatest Films of All Time” poll, which initially propelled Kane to fame), Breathless is likely the second most significant debut film ever made. It’s a landmark achievement, no matter how you view it. Bernardo Bertolucci famously compared Godard to Christ, suggesting that cinema was fundamentally changed by his work – meaning that everything before Breathless is different from everything after it.