Breathless shows what the modern French version of [la nouvelle vague] really looks like, and the result is one of the most genuinely novel films of the lot. As parody, it is as subtly intellectual as [Robert Aldrich's] Kiss Me Deadly was exaggeratedly visceral; as improvisation, it is as unified and witty as [John Huston's] Beat the Devil was chaotic and arch; and as an example of new-wave camp, it is a beaut….

The principle of novelty, in Breathless, lies in its acceptance of an exhausted genre—the Hollywood grade-B crime film—as a simulacrum of reality. Its plot is little more than that of the quickie digest: Footloose Killer on the Run Tangles with Double-dealing Broad as Cops Close In—Big Paris Manhunt. These mediocre clichés are played out in the deadpan style of an actualité, producing a dual impression of great moral wit and intense...