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story, with Jean-Luc Godard directing and co-writing, further expresses his views on personal relationships mingling with freedom in "Breathless" ( A Bout de Souffle). In this film, Michel treads a dangerous path by putting his freedom in the hands of Patricia. The "system" is after him; in this instance, it is the police who want him for murder. Patricia becomes aware of what he has done and knows, as Michel does, that at any moment she could take his freedom from him. Here we have introduced this interesting concept of how trust and love interact with freedom, specifically how one character would be willing to trust, and ultimately sacrifice, his freedom in pursuit of love. Michel, in the end, is assassinated by the system because his love proved false. Patricia was so quick to sacrifice Michel's freedom because her faux freedom was in danger. Police officials threatened to take her visa, but Michel threatened to show her a life of true freedom found in love. In "Breathless", Patricia is the most sympathetic version of the "unfree", who will show up again in the next two movies to once again destroy the truly free.

"Bonnie and Clyde" places a very heavy accent on the "system" - it is entirely evil and unforgiving. Even the captured Sheriff is completely humorless and without our sympathy. In this film, we see an entire evolution of personal relationships as relating to freedom. In "400 Blows", the system, the unfree, and personal relations were the same oppressive entity. In "Breathless", the system was separate from the unfree personal relation, but were still closely linked. In "Bonnie and Clyde", the division is clear: the system is distant and looming, and only the free can have personal relations with each other and any involvement with the unfree threatens the well-being of the free. In this film, Bonnie, Clyde, C.W., and Buck are all free. The gang's involvement with Blanche and C.W.'s father Ivan Moss, who are both unfree, brings about their destruction. This frightening breed of unfree, which was first presented to us with Patricia in "Breathless", can summon the system at will to kill the free, as is done in the most brutal way to Bonnie at Clyde at the film's conclusion. Truffaut and Godard were slated to tackle this film (studio politics kept them from it), but this film indicates a thorough metamorphosis of their ideas on freedom.

Easy Rider is very straight-forward in its ideas on freedom. In this new world, the system and the unfree are one

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