"Born of a Frenchman's love of the movies, particularly American film noir, a low budget, and a tight schedule (which allowed him to 'invent at the last minute'), Godard's Breathless changed forever the look of cinema. Contemporary critics were astounded (or more often outraged) by Godard's use of jump-cuts and hand-held camera, and his depiction of an amoral generation. Their indignation arose perhaps less from the characters' indifference to traditional values, than from Godard's 'indifference' to conventional narrative. As critics lamented his confusing cuts and fragmented narrative (which today seems almost classical), both audiences and filmmakers learned to see the cinema anew-not clearly, but in all its contradictions." Kathy Geritz