In “Nouvelle Vague,” a new film from the director Richard Linklater, an impassioned young movie critic expresses his belief in what cinema could be—and frets about what he himself may never be. It’s 1959, and the critic is Jean-Luc Godard , a soon-to-be leader of the French New Wave, a nascent movement of journalists who are trading in their typewriters for film cameras, aiming to ignite a cinematic revolution. But Godard, unlike some of his comrades, has yet to direct his first picture. Claude Chabrol has already made “ Le Beau Serge .” François Truffaut is about to unveil “The 400 Blows,” to great acclaim. Looming over them all is the spectre of “Citizen Kane,” which Orson Welles directed when he was twenty-five. (Godard is already twenty-nine.)

And so Godard makes “À Bout de So

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