Jean-Pierre Melville

A small cell of resistance fighters faces the constant threat of capture and death while operating in Nazi-occupied France.

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.