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If Alan Resnais made highly structured and architectonic masterpieces, the other crest of the "new wave" of French film in the 1950s is represented by an almost diametrically opposed spirit. Play, freedom, joy, the apparent lack of continuity and direction, are elements that combine to make films such as Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless such wonderful experiments in film.

Both are about society's marginalised - a troubled adolescent and an aimless drifter/conman - and both find pleasure in filming the little mundane situations that characterise ordinary existence. Taking out the garbage, running through traffic, struggling to light a cigarette, lazing around in bed. All these moments come together in a patchwork of experience. The camera sometimes lingers on a scene for an extremely long time, capturing conversations and encounters in a single take. We see the awkwardness of characters negotiating cramped spaces, without the cinematic convensions of continuity editing cut or the neatness of framing characters economically within the space. Characters move off the screen but the camera lingers on the empty bed, the deserted stairs, the abandoned window, hoping that our protagonists will return, so that it can resume its voyeuristic appraisal of what it means to be human, at the fringes of societal convention.

And what chracterisation and acting. The irrepressible character Antoine Daniol, who Truffaut felt was such a wonderful creation that he consistenly returned him throughout his film making career. The strange combination of a suave, reckless but increasingly alientated and desperate French con-man with a hesitant American student speaking stilted French, Godard's early recognition of a post-war clash of cultures. The conversations seem trivial but the unexpected erruption of emotional response to the most mundane comments are a priceless insight into the way we value what others have to say to us - even if we're on the run wanted by the authorities.

And what tragedy. Where the draw of new experience or the beguiling presence of someone so enchanting means you will risk getting caught to both escape and return to danger, in order to love.