Jean-Paul Belmondo is a goofball in Breathless.

Despite attempts to emulate the cool and sophisticated persona of Humphrey Bogart, Belmondo’s Michael merely comes across as a child playing pretend. But it is with this failure that we become completely charmed by his character.

It is difficult not to love one so hopelessly out of his league. Regardless of his murder, cheating, and thievery, one cannot help but smile as reality regularly puts Michael in his place.

In one scene he…

Joe Gideon produces great art. He loves his girlfriend. He wants to live. But are these beliefs and desires genuine? Gideon, as Fosse's proxy, its that he has lost trace of what is truth and what is mere posturing.

With this intense scrutiny of his life, all throughout the runtime we are left to probe our own. While doing so, we enrich ourselves in the watching of the film just as much as Fosse surely must have had in the…

While we may witness the events that kick off the plot of In a Lonely Place, Nicholas Ray masterfully maintains suspense by having us continually question whether the film itself was truthful in what was or was not shown.

Like all noirs the script is loaded with cynicism, of which Gloria Grahame plays off of so effortlessly well.

When first questioned at the police station, Grahame's remarkable talent is on full display as her every glance and motion builds upon…