Jean-Luc Godard, who used to say that Breathless was his version of Scarface ("plus a little"), amended the statement in 1962: "Now I see where it belongs-along with ‘Alice in Wonderland' (in Milne, "Godard on Godard"). Godard's "plus a little" took the unsuspecting 1959 viewer to the other side of the mirror with hand-held shooting, improvised acting, and jump cutting. But what seemed like fanciful illogic then is recognized as cinema logic now; Breathless remains an essential work of the French New Wave by its most gifted exponent.