…and by extension, a happy 50th birthday to the French New Wave, not necessarily initiated with the release on May 4th 1959 of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, but that film marked the first major artistic achievement of a movement which, regardless of one’s opinion of individual films and directors, unarguably changed cinema forever. Quite how has been and will be a matter for film historians to debate and revise, probably for as long as film remains a serious art form.