[chairman of the bored]

gaulbert-i disagree with you that breathless and contempt are "the same movie", but alot of godard's work can definitely be seen as a continuum; always working with similar ideas done with different approaches, or different ideas done with recognizable approaches.

staring into the camera has probably been done since the lumiere brothers were filming their documentaries, but godard's use of it is pretty killer. i guess what made it stand out for him was that he would disrupt the whole narrative to have one of the actors ackowledge the camera and/or audience.

i do think godard was the first to film so many scenes with the camera staring at the BACK of peoples heads (vivre sa vie)