The Cahiers Revolution

In the 1950s, a group of film critics at Cahiers du Cinéma magazine — including Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, and Chabrol — argued that Hollywood studio films were impersonal products, and that cinema should express the director's personal vision. They called this the auteur theory.

They then made their own films to prove it. With almost no money, borrowed equipment, and non-professional actors, they created a movement that changed world cinema. Breathless (1960) by Godard used jump cuts, broke the fourth wall, and improvised dialogue — every "mistake" was intentional.