A breathless jumble of film allusions, literary shout-outs, and exuberant pop-culture riffing, this gangster fantasia, dreamed up by Jean-Luc Godard in 1964, is dense with the director's personal checkpoints—from Fritz Lang films and American cartoons to his own mother's maiden name. And yet, watching the film today, you're struck by the melancholy that underlines and offsets every burst of fancy, every mad dash of beauty. Godard takes the basic plot of an American pulp... More >>>