So this is a movie from 1960 and is basically right at the start of the French New Wave, and it really feels very modern. Not just compared to the silent stuff I’ve been watching, but even a lot of movies filmed in color. It has a kind of casual, naturalistic insouciance that I can’t describe except to say that it’s almost the default mode of modern movies. And apparently this was one of the first movies to be that way, so yeah: hugely influential.

But a thing about hugely influential movies is that they often suck in themselves, because all their influential things seem blandly commonplace while their flaws are highlighted, right. But this one… still works. And that’s mostly down to the weird charisma of the two leads, who are yutes in Paris trying to figure out if they’re in love with each other — think Before Sunrise, except that oh yeah, before they meet up the dude kills a cop while stealing a car, so there’s a backdrop of an escalating manhunt for him.

The effect is a bit Shaun of the Dead-esque: The movie kind of goes around ignoring the crime at first, and then it slowly becomes more and more important, until it basically drives the last act.

Weirdly enough, the cop-killing doesn’t make this into a dark antihero movie; in fact it makes it more enjoyable to watch, because there’s no tension in the viewers’ mind whether this guy is a lovable rogue or an asshole: He fucking killed a dude flat-up, he’s horrible. So sure, when he’s charming, he’s charming, but when his dickishness pokes through, you never wonder whether you are supposed to be sympathetic to him: Nope! No sympathy is appropriate.

So, you can enjoy this as what would pass for an above-average indie crime-romance today, and also appreciate its enormous influence. Recommended.

And as a side note, the main character is American, and while she seems to speak fluent French, there is never a second when even I, as a person who does not speak French, doubted that she was foreign — she seems to actually pronounce consonants, in a way that the native speakers don’t. I can’t actually explain it, but yeah, I imagine to an actual French speaker it would be as completely obvious as like the Marquis de Lafayette speaking English is to us.