Description
Jean-Luc Godard threw everything he had learned from years of movie watching into his debut feature — creating an enormously influential film and a seminal study of existential longing and betrayal. Within the first few minutes Michel (Belmondo), a foul-mouthed Parisian who idolizes Humphrey Bogart, she’s a police officer and immediately becomes a fugitive on the run. He visits an ex-girlfriend and while casually charming her, he steals her money. He then gallivant through the marvelous streets of 1940s Paris, pursuing Patricia (Seberg), a blonde pixie-like American selling the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-Elysees. Michel is childlikeas he pouts and winds in his fruitless attempts to seduce Patricia, then turns cold as ice as he curses are out, racing off to steal a car or meet up with some other thugs. Meanwhile, Patricia seems to seduce everybody with her youth and naïveté. She is just 20 years old, possibly pregnant, and despite a few scattered assignments she does for the paper, she is dreamy and directionless. Even so, she does not refuse Michel, though she won’t commit to him. As they follow each other in and out of cafés and boutiques, sailing past the Eiffel Tower and down the grand boulevards in gorgeous stolen cars, we await what a sure to be a tragic ending.
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