Watch Pickpocket

Belmondo, Seberg and the jump cut; the New Wave arrives in one film.

The life of a donkey passed between owners; Bresson's saint.

A Resistance prisoner plans his escape from Montluc in real detail; Bresson's truest film.

Twenty-four hours in the Paris banlieue after a riot, in black and white; "so far, so good".

Alain Delon as a hitman in a trench coat and fedora; Melville's cool influenced every hitman film since.

Simone Signoret as an ageing ex-prostitute raising the children of others in Belleville.

Three hours of the Paris theatre world of the 1830s, made in secret under the Occupation.

Truffaut's own childhood as Antoine Doinel, ending with the freeze frame on the beach.