3. Breathless
Breathless forever changed the way that movies were made by popularising the jump cut and shunning the classical style of editing. There are no dissolves, fades or iris shots to be found in Breathless, which absolutely polarised audiences who saw the film when it came out. Jump cuts have become standard fare in the grammar of film and the French New Wave of filmmaking is to blame for that. While The 400 Blows invented the genre, Breathless is responsible for giving the world the greatest movie of the French New Wave and introduced audiences to the immensely influential Jean-Luc Godard. The story of Breathless subverts the Hollywood, B-Picture tropes into something new and different for the time. The main character is an armed killer on the run but the narrative focuses on his attempts to woo a newspaper saleswoman which completely underplays all of the noir trappings it seems to revel in. The editing style, rhythm and emphasis on storytelling make Breathless a seminal piece of film history.