There was before À Bout de Souffle, and there was after À Bout de Souffle. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du cinéma. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, À Bout de Souffle helped launch the French New Wave and ensured that cinema would never be the same.