Jean-Luc Godard (UK: GOD-ar, US: goh-DAR; French: [ʒɑ̃ lyk ɡɔdaʁ]; 3 December 1930 – 13 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era.
Godard, with Breathless, was absorbing everything from American B-movies, especially the energy of Samuel Fuller and the pacing of films noirs, but he was also taking the spontaneity and street realism of Italian Neorealism, particularly Rossellini. He was synthesizing it all into something completely new.