Le Petit Soldat

For his third film, Godard began moving away from merely stylization and deconstructing genres into the world of politics and social commentary. He maintains the light-on-its-feet, New Wave style for what is (in a way) an espionage film. No one understood the revolutionary spirit and the youth culture of cool better than Godard. His protagonist is a revolutionary who doesn't really believe in anything, but is caught in between French and Arab revolutary groups. I love his early films because no matter what they're about, they're all essentially comedies (of course I use that term loosely as American's understand it). To watch this film is to watch a genius finding his voice and coming into his own as an artist.