Jean-Pierre Melville

After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts, finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.

Jean-Luc Godard's innovative and hugely influential first film, what would become one of the seminal works of the French New Wave. Paying homage to the energy of American gangster B-movies of the 1940s, Godard took his plotline from a news item, supplied by contemporary François Truffaut, in which a cop-killer was harboured by his girlfriend and casually betrayed for the reward money.