9 Major Cinematic Milestones That Happened By Complete Accident

2. Godard Doesn't Want To Cut Scenes, Reinvents Cinema

The French New Wave was a cinematic movement comprised of filmmakers who were fed up with the standard means of filmmaking, the template established stringently by Hollywood that a film needed to be shot in such a way. Jean-Luc Godard was one of the major proponents of this movement, and his debut feature Breathless was wildly exalted for rejecting the dominant aesthetic through jump cuts; rather than wait for a shot to naturally finish, the director would cut to the next relevant moment, prompting a jarring effect that viewers at the time were both fascinated and offended by in equal measure. The story behind it, however, is hilarious; Godard's financier informed him that the rough cut of Breathless was far too long, and so rather than pore over the footage again and attempt to restructure a slicker cut or have to face cutting scenes entirely, Godard simply cut the flabby middle out of shots to slim things down to a manageable 90 minutes.