Taking his plotline from a news item supplied by Truffaut, in which a cop-killer was harboured by his girlfriend and casually betrayed for reward money, A Bout de Souffle is an enervating intro into the French New Wave and remains one of Godard’s finest films. ‘Fast and loose, with a buzzing sense of the potential of the cinema undercut by the beginnings of Godard’s intellectual rigour, this is at once a homage to the American gangster film, and an attack on the very ideas of Americans, gangsters and films.’ – Kim Newman, Empire.