25 Great French Films: Ebert's Essentials

I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between.

—François Truffaut

and what is most revolutionary about the movie is its headlong pacing, its cool detachment, its dismissal of authority, and the way its narcissistic young heroes are obsessed with themselves and oblivious to the larger society.

We expect that the mystery of the videos will be solved, explained, and make sense. But perhaps not.

He postures as a gangster, maintains a cool facade, is frightened underneath. His persona is a performance that functions to conceal his desperation

When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.

She desires not a man who thinks she is virtuous, but one who thinks she is not.

Malle’s Au Revoir les Enfants; Godard’s Breathless; Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Day for Night, and Jules and Jim; Rivette’s Le Belle Noiseuse; and Chabrol’s Le Boucher.