1963: Le petit soldat

Godard's second feature, starring Anna Karina and some bloke who's not Jean-Paul Belmondo, was banned by the French government for three years, for telling the story of a man who gets caught between the fronts of the opposing fractions fighting the Algerian war in Europe. More importantly, like the earliest talkies, it was apparently shot silently, with only the most important sounds overdubbed later. To me, that's a technical weakness rather than a bold artistic move, but I got used to it at the time. With its grainy black and white and its nervous energy, it feels like a lesser version of À bout de souffle, which is not to say it is a bad film at all. (7.5)