During his early career as a film critic forCahiers du Cinéma, Godard criticized mainstream French cinema's "Tradition of Quality" and championed Hollywood directors likeAlfred Hitchcock andHoward Hawks.[1][4] In response, he and like-minded critics began to make their own films,[1] challenging the conventions of traditionalHollywood in addition toFrench cinema.[5] Godard first received global acclaim forBreathless (1960), a milestone in the New Wave movement.[2] His work makes use of frequent homages and references tofilm history, and often expressed his political views; he was an avid reader ofexistentialism[6] andMarxist philosophy, and in 1969 formed theDziga Vertov Group with other radical filmmakers to promote political works.[7] After the New Wave, his politics were less radical, and his later films came to be about human conflict andartistic representation "from ahumanist rather than Marxist perspective."[7] He explained that "As a critic, I thought of myself as a film-maker. Today I still think of myself as a critic, and in a sense I am, more than ever before. Instead of writing criticism, I make a film, but the critical dimension is subsumed."[8]
Godard was married three times, to actressesAnna Karina andAnne Wiazemsky, both of whom starred in several of his films, and later to his longtime partnerAnne-Marie Miéville.[9] His collaborations with Karina inVivre sa vie (1962),Bande à part (1964) andPierrot le Fou (1965) were called "arguably the most influential body of work in the history of cinema" byFilmmaker magazine.[10] In a 2002Sight & Sound poll, Godard ranked third in the critics' top ten directors of all time.[11]
He is said to have "generated one of the largest bodies of critical analysis of any filmmaker since the mid-twentieth century."[12] His work has been central tonarrative theory and has "challenged both commercial narrative cinema norms and film criticism's vocabulary."[13] In 2010, Godard was awarded anAcademy Honorary Award.[14] He was known for his aphorisms, such as "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun" and "A film consists of a beginning, a middle and an end, though not necessarily in that order."[15] Some critics have claimed that Godard's films contain prevailing themes ofmisogyny andsexism towards women.[16][17] Feminist film theoristLaura Mulvey, has agreed that "While trying to decode a deep-seated, but interesting, misogyny, I came to think that Godard's cinema knows its own entrapment...for feminist curiosity, it is still a goldmine."[18]
Jean-Luc Godard was born on 3 December 1930[19] in the7th arrondissement of Paris,[20] the son of Odile (née Monod) and Paul Godard, a Swiss physician.[21] His wealthy parents came fromProtestant families of Franco–Swiss descent, and his mother was the daughter of Julien Monod, a founder of theBanque Paribas. She was the great-granddaughter of theologianAdolphe Monod. Other relatives on his mother's side include composerJacques-Louis Monod, naturalistThéodore Monod and pastorFrédéric Monod.[22][23] Four years after Jean-Luc's birth, his father moved the family to Switzerland. At the outbreak of theSecond World War, Godard was in France, and returned to Switzerland with difficulty.[24] He spent most of the war in Switzerland, although his family made clandestine trips to his grandfather's estate on the French side ofLake Geneva. Godard attended school inNyon, Switzerland.[25][15]
Not a frequent film-goer, he attributed his introduction to cinema to a reading ofAndré Malraux's essayOutline of a Psychology of Cinema and theLa Revue du cinéma, which was relaunched in 1946.[26] In 1946, he went to study at theLycée Buffon in Paris and, through family connections, mixed with members of its cultural elite. He lodged with the writerJean Schlumberger. Having failed hisbaccalauréat exam in 1948, he returned to Switzerland. He studied inLausanne and lived with his parents, whose marriage was breaking up. He spent time in Geneva also with a group that included another film fanatic, Roland Tolmatchoff, and the extreme rightist philosopher Jean Parvulesco. His elder sister Rachel encouraged him to paint, which he did, in an abstract style. After time spent at a boarding school inThonon to prepare for the retest, which he passed, he returned to Paris in 1949.[27] He registered for a certificate inanthropology at theUniversity of Paris (Sorbonne), but did not attend class.[28]
In Paris, in theLatin Quarter just prior to 1950,ciné-clubs (film societies) were gaining prominence. Godard began attending these clubs—theCinémathèque Française, Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin (CCQL), Work and Culture ciné club, and others—which became his regular haunts. The Cinémathèque was founded byHenri Langlois andGeorges Franju in 1936; Work and Culture was a workers' education group for whichAndré Bazin had organized wartime film screenings and discussions and which had become a model for the film clubs that had risen throughout France after the Liberation; CCQL, founded in about 1947 or 1948, was animated and intellectually led byMaurice Schérer.[29] At these clubs he met fellow film enthusiasts includingClaude Chabrol andFrançois Truffaut.[30] Godard was part of a generation for whom cinema took on a special importance. He said: "In the 1950s cinema was as important as bread—but it isn't the case anymore. We thought cinema would assert itself as an instrument of knowledge, a microscope... a telescope.... At the Cinémathèque I discovered a world which nobody had spoken to me about. They'd told us aboutGoethe, but notDreyer. ... We watched silent films in the era of talkies. We dreamed about film. We were likeChristians in thecatacombs."[31][32]
His foray into films began in the field ofcriticism. Along with Maurice Schérer (writing under the to-be-famous pseudonymÉric Rohmer) andJacques Rivette, he founded the short-lived film journalLa Gazette du cinéma [fr], which saw the publication of five issues in 1950.[5] When Bazin co-founded the influential critical magazineCahiers du Cinéma in 1951 (a seminal publication on cinema and its main observers and participants), Godard was the first of the younger critics from the CCQL/Cinémathèque group to be published.[33] The January 1952 issue featured his review of an American melodrama directed byRudolph Maté,No Sad Songs for Me.[34] His "Defence and Illustration of Classical Découpage" published in September 1952, in which he attacks an earlier article by Bazin and defends the use of theshot–reverse shot technique, is one of his earliest important contributions to cinema criticism.[35] PraisingOtto Preminger and "the greatest American artist—Howard Hawks", Godard raises their harsh melodramas above the more "formalistic and overtly artful films ofWelles,De Sica, andWyler which Bazin endorsed".[36] At this point Godard's activities did not include making films. Rather, he watched films, and wrote about them, and helped others make films, notably Rohmer, with whom he worked onPrésentation ou Charlotte et son steak.[37]
Having left Paris in the fall of 1952, Godard returned to Switzerland and went to live with his mother in Lausanne. He became friendly with his mother's lover, Jean-Pierre Laubscher, who was a labourer on theGrande Dixence Dam. Through Laubscher he secured work himself as a construction worker at the Plaz Fleuri work site at the dam. He saw the possibility of making a documentary film about the dam; when his initial contract ended, to prolong his time at the dam, he moved to the post of telephone switchboard operator. While on duty, in April 1954, he put through a call to Laubscher which relayed the fact that Odile Monod, Godard's mother, had died in a scooter accident. Thanks to Swiss friends who lent him a35 mm movie camera, he was able to shoot on 35mm film. He rewrote the commentary that Laubscher had written, and gave his film a rhyming titleOpération béton (Operation Concrete). The company that administered the dam bought the film and used it for publicity purposes.[38]
As he continued to work forCahiers, he madeUne femme coquette (1955), a 10-minute short, inGeneva; and in January 1956 he returned to Paris. A plan for a feature film of Goethe'sElective Affinities proved too ambitious and came to nothing. Truffaut enlisted his help to work on an idea he had for a film based on the true-crime story of a petty criminal, Michel Portail, who had shot a motorcycle policeman and whose girlfriend had turned him in to the police, but Truffaut failed to interest any producers. Another project with Truffaut, a comedy about a country girl arriving in Paris, was also abandoned.[39] He worked with Rohmer on a planned series of short films centering on the lives of two young women, Charlotte and Véronique; and in the autumn of 1957,Pierre Braunberger produced the first film in the series,All the Boys Are Called Patrick, directed by Godard from Rohmer's script.A Story of Water (1958) was created largely out of unused footage shot by Truffaut. In 1958, Godard, with a cast that includedJean-Paul Belmondo and Anne Colette, made his last short before gaining international prominence as a filmmaker,Charlotte et son Jules, an homage toJean Cocteau. The film was shot in Godard's hotel room on the rue de Rennes and apparently reflected something of the 'romantic austerity' of Godard's own life at this time. His Swiss friend Roland Tolmatchoff noted: "In Paris he had a bigBogart poster on the wall and nothing else."[40] In December 1958, Godard reported from the Festival of Short Films inTours and praised the work of, and became friends withJacques Demy,Jacques Rozier andAgnès Varda—he already knewAlain Resnais whose entry he praised—but Godard now wanted to make a feature film. He travelled to the1959 Cannes Film Festival and asked Truffaut to let him use the story on which they had collaborated in 1956, about car thief Michel Portail. He sought money from producerGeorges de Beauregard, whom he had met previously while working briefly in the publicity department ofTwentieth Century Fox's Paris office, and who was also at the Festival. Beauregard could offer his expertise, but was in debt from two productions based onPierre Loti stories; hence, financing came instead from a film distributor, René Pignières.[41]
Godard'sBreathless (À bout de souffle, 1960), starringJean-Paul Belmondo andJean Seberg, distinctly expressed theFrench New Wave's style, and incorporated quotations from several elements of popular culture—specifically Americanfilm noir. It was based on a story suggested byFrançois Truffaut.[15] The film employed various techniques such as the innovative use ofjump cuts (which were traditionally considered amateurish),character asides and breaking theeyeline match incontinuity editing.[42][43] Another unique aspect ofBreathless was the spontaneous writing of the script on the day of shooting—a technique that the actors found unsettling—which contributed to the spontaneous, documentary-like ambiance of the film.[44]
Godard wanted to hire Seberg, who was living in Paris with her husband François Moreuil, a lawyer, to play the American woman. Seberg had become famous in 1956 whenOtto Preminger had chosen her to playJoan of Arc in hisSaint Joan, and had then cast her in his 1958 adaptation ofBonjour Tristesse.[48] Her performance in this film had not been generally regarded as a success—The New York Times's critic called her a "misplaced amateur"—but Truffaut and Godard disagreed. In the role of Michel Poiccard, Godard cast Belmondo, an actor he had already called, inArts in 1958, "theMichel Simon and theJules Berry of tomorrow."[49] The cameraman wasRaoul Coutard, choice of the producer Beauregard. Godard wantedBreathless to be shot like a documentary, with a lightweight handheld camera and a minimum of added lighting; Coutard had experience as a documentary cameraman while working for the French army's information service during theFrench-Indochina War. Tracking shots were filmed by Coutard from a wheelchair pushed by Godard. Though Godard had prepared a traditional screenplay, he dispensed with it and wrote the dialogue day by day as the production went ahead.[50] The film's importance was recognized immediately, and in January 1960 Godard won theJean Vigo Prize, awarded "to encourage anauteur of the future". One reviewer mentionedAlexandre Astruc's prophecy of the age of thecaméra-stylo, the camera that a new generation would use with the efficacy with which a writer uses his pen—"here is in fact the first work authentically written with acaméra-stylo".[51]Richard Brody writes: "AfterBreathless, anything artistic appeared possible in the cinema. The film moved at the speed of the mind and seemed, unlike anything that preceded it, a live recording of one person thinking in real time."[15]Phillip Lopate wrote that "It seemed a new kind of storytelling, with its saucy jump cuts, digressions, quotes, in jokes and addresses to the viewer."[15]
Anna Karina, having rejected a role inBreathless, appeared in the next film shot by Godard,Le petit soldat (The Little Soldier), which concerned France's war in Algeria.
In 1960 Godard shotLe petit soldat (The Little Soldier). The cast included Godard's future wifeAnna Karina. At this time Karina had virtually no experience as an actress. Godard used her awkwardness as an element of her performance. Godard and Karina were a couple by the end of the shoot. She appeared again, along with Belmondo, in Godard's first color film,A Woman Is a Woman (1961), their first project to be released. The film was intended as an homage to theAmerican musical. Adjustments that Godard made to the original version of the story gave it autobiographical resonances, "specifically in regard to his relationship with Anna Karina." The film revealed "the confinement within the four walls of domestic life" and "the emotional and artistic fault lines that threatened their relationship".[52]
Godard's next film,Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live, 1962), was one of his most popular among critics. Karina starred as Nana, an errant mother and aspiring actress whose financially strained circumstances lead her to the life of astreetwalker. It is an episodic account of her rationalizations to prove she is free, even though she is tethered at the end of herpimp's short leash. In one scene, within a café, she spreads her arms out and announces she is free to raise or lower them as she wishes.[53]
The film was a popular success and led toColumbia Pictures giving him a deal where he would be provided with $100,000 to make a movie, with complete artistic control.[53]
Le petit soldat was not released until 1963, the first of three films he released that year. It dealt with theAlgerian War of Independence and was banned by the French government for the next two years due to its political nature.[54] The 'little soldier' Bruno Forestier was played byMichel Subor. Forestier was a character close to Godard himself, an image-maker and intellectual, 'more or less my spokesman, but not totally' Godard told an interviewer.[55]
The film begins on 13 May 1958, the date of theattempted putsch in Algeria, and ends later the same month. In the film, Bruno Forestier, aphotojournalist who has links with a right-wing paramilitary group working for the French government, is ordered to murder a professor accused of aiding the Algerian resistance. He is in love with Veronica Dreyer, a young woman who has worked with the Algerian fighters. He is captured by Algerian militants and tortured. His organization captures and tortures her. In makingLe petit soldat, Godard took the unusual step of writing dialogue every day and calling the lines to the actors during filming – a technique made possible by filming without direct sound and dubbing dialogue in post-production.[56][57]
His following film wasLes Carabiniers, based on a story byRoberto Rossellini, one of Godard's influences.[58] The film follows two peasants who join the army of a king, only to find futility in the whole thing as the king reveals the deception of war-administrating leaders.
His final film of 1963, and the most commercially successful of his career, wasLe Mépris (Contempt), starringMichel Piccoli and one of France's biggest female stars,Brigitte Bardot.[59][60] The film follows Paul (Piccoli), a screenwriter who is commissioned by Prokosch (Jack Palance), an arrogant American movie producer, to rewrite the script for an adaptation ofHomer'sOdyssey, directed by Austrian directorFritz Lang (playing himself). Lang's 'high culture' interpretation of the story is lost on Prokosch, whose character is a firm indictment of the commercial motion picture hierarchy.[61]
In 1964, Godard and Karina formed a production company, Anouchka Films.[62] He directedBande à part (Band of Outsiders), also starring Karina and described by Godard as "Alice in Wonderland meetsFranz Kafka."[63] It follows two young men, looking to score on a heist, who both fall in love with Karina, and quotes from severalgangster film conventions.[64][63] While promoting the film, Godard wrote that according toD. W. Griffith, all one needs to make a film is "a girl and a gun."[65]
Une femme mariée (A Married Woman, 1964) followedBand of Outsiders. It was a slow, deliberate, toned-down black-and-white picture without a real story. The film was shot in four weeks[66] and was "an explicitly and stringently modernist film". It showed Godard's "engagement with the most advanced thinking of the day, as expressed in the work ofClaude Lévi-Strauss andRoland Barthes" and its fragmentation and abstraction reflected also "his loss of faith in the familiarHollywood styles."[67]
In 1965, Godard directedAlphaville, a futuristic blend ofscience fiction,film noir and satire.[68]Eddie Constantine starred asLemmy Caution, a detective who is sent into a city controlled by a giant computer named Alpha 60. His mission is to make contact with Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon), a famous scientist who has fallen mysteriously silent, and is believed to be suppressed by the computer.[69][70] His next film wasPierrot le Fou (1965).Gilles Jacob, an author, critic and president of theCannes Film Festival, called it both a "retrospective" and recapitulation.[71] He solicited the participation of Belmondo, by then a famous actor, to guarantee the necessary amount of funding for the expensive film.[72] Godard said the film was "connected with the violence and loneliness that lie so close to happiness today. It's very much a film about France."[73] The film featured American directorSamuel Fuller as himself.
Masculin Féminin (1966), based on twoGuy de Maupassant stories,La Femme de Paul andLe Signe, was a study of contemporary French youth and their involvement with cultural politics. An intertitle refers to the characters as "The children ofMarx andCoca-Cola." Although Godard's cinema is sometimes thought to depict a wholly masculine point of view, Phillip John Usher has demonstrated how the film, by the way it connects images and disparate events, seems to blur gender lines.[74]
Godard followed withMade in U.S.A (1966), the source material for which wasRichard Stark'sThe Jugger. A classic New Wave crime thriller, it was inspired by American Noir films. Karina stars as the anti-hero searching for her murdered lover and the film includes a cameo byMarianne Faithfull.[75][76] A year later cameTwo or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), in whichMarina Vlady portrays a woman leading a double life as housewife and prostitute, considered to be "among the greatest achievements in filmmaking."[77]
La Chinoise (1967) saw Godard at his most politically forthright so far. The film focused on a group of students and engaged with the ideas coming out of the student activist groups in contemporary France. Released just before theMay 1968 events, the film is thought by some to have foreshadowed the student rebellions that took place.[78][79]
That same year, Godard made a more colourful and political film,Week End. It follows a Parisian couple as they leave on a weekend trip across the French countryside to collect an inheritance. What ensues is a confrontation with the tragic flaws of the over-consumingbourgeoisie. The film contains an eight-minutetracking shot of the couple stuck in an unremitting traffic jam as they leave the city, cited as a technique Godard used to deconstruct bourgeois trends.[80] Startlingly, a few shots contain extra footage from, as it were, before the beginning of the take (while the actors are preparing) and after the end of the take (while the actors are coming out of character).Week End's enigmatic and audacious end title sequence, which reads "End of Cinema", appropriately marked an end to the narrative and cinematic period in Godard's filmmaking career.[81][page needed]
Godard was known for his "highly political voice", and regularly featured political content in his films.[82][83] One of his earliest features,Le petit soldat, which dealt with theAlgerian War of Independence, was notable for its attempt to present the complexity of the dispute; the film was perceived as equivocating and as drawing a "moral equivalence" between the French forces and theNational Liberation Front.[84] Along these lines,Les Carabiniers presents a fictional war that is initially romanticized in the way its characters approach their service, but becomes a stiff anti-warmetonym.[85] In addition to the international conflicts to which Godard sought an artistic response, he was also very concerned with the social problems in France. The earliest and best example of this is Karina's potent portrayal of a prostitute inVivre sa vie.[86][87][88] In 1960s Paris, the political milieu was not overwhelmed by one specific movement. There was, however, a distinct post-war climate shaped by various international conflicts such as colonialism in North Africa and Southeast Asia.Godard's Marxist disposition did not become abundantly explicit untilLa Chinoise andWeek End, but is evident in several films—namelyPierrot andUne femme mariée.[86][89]
Godard was accused by some of harbouringanti-Semitic views: in 2010, in the lead-up to the presentation of Godard's honorary Oscar, a prominent article inThe New York Times byMichael Cieply drew attention to the idea, which had been circulating through the press in previous weeks, that Godard might be an anti-Semite, and thus undeserving of the accolade. Cieply makes reference toRichard Brody's bookEverything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, and alluded to a previous, longer article published by theJewish Journal as lying near the origin of the debate.[90] The article also draws upon Brody's book, for example in the following quotation, which Godard made on television in 1981: "Moses is my principal enemy...Moses, when he received the commandments, he saw images and translated them. Then he brought the texts, he didn't show what he had seen. That's why theJewish people are accursed."[91]
Immediately after Cieply's article was published, Brody made a clear point of criticising the "extremely selective and narrow use" of passages in his book, and noted that Godard's work approached the Holocaust with "the greatest moral seriousness".[92] Indeed, his documentaries feature images from theHolocaust in a context suggesting he considersNazism and the Holocaust as the nadir of human history. Godard's views become more complex regarding theState of Israel. In 1970, Godard travelled to the Middle East to make a pro-Palestinian film he did not complete and whose footage eventually became part of the 1976 filmIci et ailleurs. In this film, Godard seems to view thePalestinians' cause as one of many worldwide Leftist revolutionary movements. Elsewhere, Godard explicitly identified himself as ananti-Zionist but denied the accusations of anti-Semitism.[93]
Godard produced several pieces that directly address theVietnam War. Furthermore, there are two scenes inPierrot le fou that tackle the issue. The first is a scene that takes place in the initial car ride between Ferdinand (Belmondo) and Marianne (Karina). Over the car radio, the two hear the message "garrison massacred by theViet Cong who lost 115 men". Marianne responds with an extended musing on the way the radio dehumanises the Northern Vietnamese combatants.[94] The war is present throughout the film in mentions, allusions, and depictions innewsreel footage, and the film's style was affected by Godard's political anger at the war, upsetting his ability to draw from earlier cinematic styles.[95]
Godard's engagement with German poet and playwrightBertolt Brecht stems primarily from his attempt to transpose Brecht's theory ofepic theatre and its prospect of alienating the viewer (Verfremdungseffekt) through a radical separation of the elements of the medium (theatre in Brecht's case, but in Godard's, film). Brecht's influence is keenly felt through much of Godard's work, particularly before 1980, when Godard used cinematic expression for specific political ends.[86][98]
For example,Breathless's elliptical editing, which denies the viewer a fluid narrative typical of mainstream cinema, forces the viewers to take on more critical roles, connecting the pieces themselves and coming away with more investment in the work's content.[99] In many of his most political pieces, specificallyWeek-end,Pierrot le Fou, andLa Chinoise, characters address the audience with thoughts, feelings, and instructions.[86]
AMarxist reading is possible with most if not all of Godard's early work. Godard's direct interaction with Marxism does not become explicitly apparent, however, untilWeek-end, where the nameKarl Marx is cited in conjunction with figures such asJesus Christ. A constant refrain throughout Godard's cinematic period is that of the bourgeoisie'sconsumerism, the commodification of daily life and activity, andman's alienation—all central features of Marx'scritique of capitalism.[7]
In an essay on Godard, philosopher and aesthetics scholarJacques Rancière states, "When inPierrot le fou, 1965, a film without a clear political message, Belmondo played on the word 'scandal' and the 'freedom' that the Scandal girdle supposedly offered women, the context of a Marxist critique ofcommodification, ofpop art derision at consumerism, and of afeminist denunciation of women's false 'liberation', was enough to foster adialectical reading of the joke and the whole story." The way Godard treated politics in his cinematic period was in the context of a joke, a piece of art, or a relationship, presented to be used as tools of reference, romanticising the Marxist rhetoric, rather than being solely tools of education.[100]
Une femme mariée is also structured around Marx's concept ofcommodity fetishism. Godard once said that it is "a film in which individuals are considered as things, in which chases in a taxi alternate with ethological interviews, in which the spectacle of life is intermingled with its analysis". He was very conscious of the way he wished to portray the human being. His efforts are overtly characteristic of Marx, who in hisEconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 gives one of his most nuanced elaborations, analysing how the worker is alienated from his product, the object of his productive activity.Georges Sadoul, in his short rumination on the film, describes it as a "sociological study of the alienation of the modern woman".[101]
The period which spans from May 1968 into the 1970s has been given various labels—from his "militant" period, to his "radical" period, along with terms as specific as "Maoist" and as vague as "political". In any case, the period saw Godard employ consistent revolutionary rhetoric in his films and in his public statements.[102][86]
Inspired by theMay 68 upheaval, Godard, alongsideFrançois Truffaut, led protests that shut down the1968 Cannes Film Festival in solidarity with the students and workers. Godard stated there was not a single film showing at the festival that represented their causes. "Not one, whether byMilos, myself,Roman or François. There are none. We're behind the times."[103]
Amid the upheavals of the late 1960s, Godard became passionate about "making political films politically." Though many of his films from 1968 to 1972 are feature-length films, they are low-budget and challenge the notion of what a film can be. In addition to abandoning mainstream filmmaking, Godard also tried to escape thecult of personality that had formed around him. He worked anonymously in collaboration with other filmmakers, most notablyJean-Pierre Gorin, with whom he formed theDziga-Vertov cinema collective. During this period Godard made films in England, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Palestine, and the U.S., as well as France. He and Gorin toured with their work, attempting to create discussion, mainly on college campuses. This period came to a climax with the big-budget productionTout Va Bien, which starredYves Montand andJane Fonda. Owing to a motorcycle accident that severely incapacitated Godard, Gorin ended up directing this most celebrated of their work together almost single-handedly. As a companion piece toTout va bien, the pair madeLetter to Jane, a 50-minute "examination of a still" showing Jane Fonda visiting with theViet Cong during theVietnam War. The film is a deconstruction of Western imperialist ideology. This was the last film that Godard and Gorin made together.[102]
In 1978 Godard was commissioned by theMozambican government to make a short film. During this time his experience withKodak film led him to criticise the film stock as "inherently racist" since it did not reflect the variety, nuance or complexity in dark brown or darkskin. This was because KodakShirley cards were only made for Caucasian subjects, a problem that was not rectified until 1995.[104]
In 1972, Godard and his life partner, Swiss filmmaker, Anne-Marie Miéville started the alternative video production and distribution company Sonimage, based inGrenoble. Under Sonimage, Godard producedComment ca va,Numéro Deux (1975) andSauve qui peut (la vie) (1980).[105] In 1976, Godard and Miéville, his future wife, collaborated on a series of innovative video works for European broadcast television, titledSix fois deux/Sur et sous la communication (1976) andFrance/tour/détour/deux/enfants (1978).[106] From the time that Godard returned to mainstream filmmaking in 1980, Anne-Marie Miéville remained an important collaborator.[105]
After the events ofMay 1968, when the city of Paris saw a total upheaval in response to the "authoritariande Gaulle", and Godard's professional objective was reconsidered, he began to collaborate with like-minded individuals in the filmmaking arena. His most notable collaborator wasJean-Pierre Gorin, a Maoist student ofLouis Althusser,Michel Foucault, andJacques Lacan, who later became a professor of Film Studies at theUniversity of California at San Diego, with a passion for cinema that attracted Godard's attention.[102]
Between 1968 and 1973, Godard and Gorin collaborated to make a total of five films with strong Maoist messages. The most prominent film from the collaboration wasTout Va Bien (1972). The film starredJane Fonda, who was, at the time, the wife of French filmmakerRoger Vadim. Fonda was at the height of her acting career, having won anAcademy Award for her performance inKlute (1971), and had gained notoriety as a left-wing anti-war activist. The male lead was the legendary French singer and actorYves Montand, who had appeared in prestigious films byGeorges Clouzot, Alain Résnais,Sacha Guitry,Vincente Minelli,George Cukor, andCosta-Gavras.[102]
The small group of Maoists that Godard had brought together, which included Gorin, adopted the name Dziga Vertov Group. Godard had a specific interest inDziga Vertov, a Soviet filmmaker—who was known for a series of radical documentaries titled "Kino Pravda" (literally, "film truth") and the latesilent-era feature filmMan with a Movie Camera (1929). Vertov was also a contemporary of both Sovietmontage theorists, notablySergei Eisenstein, and Russianconstructivist andavant-garde artists such asAlexander Rodchenko andVladimir Tatlin. Part of Godard's political shift after May 1968 was toward a proactive participation in theclass struggle and he drew inspiration from filmmakers associated with theRussian Revolution.[107]
Towards the end of this period of his life, Godard began to feel disappointed with his Maoist ideals and was abandoned by his wife at the time, Anne Wiazemsky. In this context, according to biographer Antoine de Baecque, Godard attempted suicide on two occasions.[108]
Return to commercial films andHistoire(s) du cinéma (1980–2000)
Godard returned to somewhat more traditional fiction withSauve qui peut (la vie) (1980), the first of a series of more mainstream films marked by autobiographical currents: it was followed byPassion,Lettre à Freddy Buache (both 1982),Prénom Carmen (1983), andGrandeur et décadence d'un petit commerce de cinéma (1986). There was, though, another flurry of controversy withJe vous salue, Marie (1985), which was condemned by theRoman Catholic Church for allegedheresy, and also withKing Lear (1987), a postmodern production of the play byWilliam Shakespeare. Also completed in 1987 was a segment in the filmAria which was based loosely from the plot ofArmide; it is set in a gym and uses severalarias byJean-Baptiste Lully from his famousArmide.[102]
His later films were marked by great formal beauty and frequently a sense of requiem:Nouvelle Vague (New Wave, 1990), the autobiographicalJLG/JLG, autoportrait de décembre (JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December, 1995), andFor Ever Mozart (1996).[109][110][111]Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro (Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, 1991) which is a quasi-sequel toAlphaville, but done with an elegiac tone and focus on the inevitable decay of age.[112] He won the Medaglia d'oro della Presidenza del Senato for the film.[113] In1990, Godard was presented with a special award from theNational Society of Film Critics.[114] Between 1988 and 1998, he produced the multi-part seriesHistoire(s) du cinéma, a monumental project which combined all the innovations of his video work with a passionate engagement in the issues of twentieth-century history and the history of film itself.[86]
In 2001,Éloge de l'amour (In Praise of Love) was released. The film is notable for its use of both film and video—the first half captured in 35 mm black and white, the latter half shot in color onDV—and subsequently transferred to film for editing.[115] The film is also noted for containing themes of ageing, love, separation, and rediscovery as it follows the young artist Edgar in his contemplation of a new work on the four stages of love.[116] InNotre musique (2004), Godard turned his focus to war, specifically, thewar in Sarajevo, but with attention to all war, including theAmerican Civil War, the war between theU.S. and Native Americans, and theIsraeli–Palestinian conflict.[117][118] The film is structured into threeDantean kingdoms:Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.[117] Godard's fascination with paradox is constant in the film. It opens with a long, ponderous montage of war images that occasionally lapses into the comic; Paradise is shown as a lush wooded beach patrolled byU.S. Marines.[119][117]
Godard's filmFilm Socialisme (2010) premiered in theUn Certain Regard section at the2010 Cannes Film Festival.[120][121] It was released theatrically in France in May 2010. Godard was rumoured to be considering directing a film adaptation ofDaniel Mendelsohn'sThe Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, an award-winning book about the Holocaust.[122] In 2013, Godard released the shortLes trois désastres (The Three Disasters) as part of the omnibus film3X3D with filmmakersPeter Greenaway andEdgar Pera.[123]3X3D premiered at the2013 Cannes Film Festival.[124] His 2014 filmGoodbye to Language, shot in3-D,[125][126] revolves around a couple who cannot communicate with each other until their pet dog acts as an interpreter for them. The film makes reference to a wide range of influences such as paintings byNicolas de Staël and the writing of William Faulkner, as well as the work of mathematicianLaurent Schwartz and dramatist Bertolt Brecht—one of Godard's most important influences.[44] It was selected to compete for thePalme d'Or in the main competition section at the2014 Cannes Film Festival, where it won theJury Prize.[127] Godard's non-traditional script for the film was described as a collage of handwritten text and images, and an "artwork" itself.[128]
In 2015J. Hoberman reported that Godard was working on a new film.[129] Initially titledTentative de bleu,[130] in December 2016Wild Bunch co-chief Vincent Maraval stated that Godard had been shootingLe livre d'image (The Image Book) for almost two years "in various Arab countries, including Tunisia" and that it is an examination of the modern Arab World."Godard presented the film at several international festivals, where it received a Special Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.[131]Le livre d'image was first shown in May 2018 at the Cannes Film Festival, and later released more widely in November 2018.[132][133] On 4 December 2019, an art installation piece created by Godard opened at theFondazione Prada in Milan. TitledLe Studio d'Orphée, the installation is a recreated workspace and includes editing equipment, furniture, and other materials used by Godard inpost-production.[134]
In 2020, Godard toldLes Inrockuptibles that his new film would be about aYellow vest protestor, and indicated that along with archival footage "there will also be a shoot. I don't know if I will find what are called actors...I would like to film the people we see on news channels but by plunging them into a situation where documentary and fiction come together."[135] In March 2021 he said that he was working on two new films during avirtual interview at theInternational Film Festival of Kerala. Godard stated "I'm finishing my movie life — yes, my moviemaker life — by doing two scripts...After, I will say, 'Goodbye, cinema.'"[136]
In July 2021, cinematographer and long time collaboratorFabrice Aragno said that work on the films was going slowly and Godard was more focused on "books, on the ideas of the film, and less in the making." Godard suggested making a film likeChris Marker'sLa Jetée to "come back to his origin." Much of the film would be shot on 35mm, 16mm and 8mm film, but the expense ofcelluloid film stock and theCOVID-19 pandemic stalled production. Aragno expected to shoot test footage that fall. He added that the second film was for theArte channel in France.[137] The first of the two films, a 20-minute short titledTrailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: "Phony Wars", premiered at the2023 Cannes Film Festival, in collaboration withSt. Laurent. The second and final posthumous short,Scenarios, left unfinished at the time of Godard's death, was finished by Aragno and Jean-Paul Battagia and will have its world premiere at the2024 Cannes Film Festival.[138][139]
Aragno said that he did not think that either film would be Godard's last film, adding "I say this often thatÉloge de l'amour was the beginning of his last gesture. These five, or six or seven films are connected to each other in a way, they're not just full stops. It's not just one painting."[138]
Godard was married to two of his leading women:Anna Karina (1961–1965)[140] andAnne Wiazemsky (1967–1979).[141] Beginning in 1970, he collaborated personally and professionally withAnne-Marie Miéville. Godard lived with Miéville inRolle, Switzerland, from 1978 onwards,[142] and was described by his former wife Karina as a "recluse".[143] Godard married Miéville in the 2010s, according to Patrick Jeanneret, an adviser to Godard.[9]
His relationship with Karina in particular produced some of his most critically acclaimed films,[144] and their relationship was widely publicised:The Independent described them as "one of the most celebrated pairings of the 1960s".[144]Filmmaker magazine called their collaborations "arguably the most influential body of work in the history of cinema."[10]
According to Karina, their relationship was tumultuous.[140][143][145] Later in life, Karina said they no longer spoke to each other.[143]
In 2017,Michel Hazanavicius directed a film about Godard,Redoubtable, based on the memoirOne Year After (French:Un an après; 2015) by Wiazemsky.[141] It centers on his life in the late 1960s, when he and Wiazemsky made films together. The film premiered at theCannes Film Festival in 2017.[148] Godard said that the film was a "stupid, stupid idea".[149]
Agnes Varda's 2017 documentaryFaces Places culminates with Varda and co-directorJR knocking on Godard's front door in Rolle for an interview. Godard agreed to the meeting but he "stands them up".[150] His nephew and assistantPaul Grivas [d] directed the 2018 documentaryFilm Catastrophe, which included behind-the-scenes footage, shot on theCosta Concordia cruise ship by Grivas during the making ofFilm Socialism, of Godard working with actors and directing the film.[151] Godard participated in the 2022 documentarySee You Friday, Robinson [fr]. DirectorMitra Farahani initiated an email exchange between Godard and Iranian filmmakerEbrahim Golestan, with emailed text letters from Golestan and "videos, images, and aphorism" responses from Godard.[152]
At the age of 91, Godard died on 13 September 2022, at his home in Rolle. His death was reported as anassisted suicide procedure, which is legal in Switzerland.[153][154][155][156] Godard's legal advisor said that he had "multiple disabling pathologies",[15] but a family member said that "He was not sick, he was simply exhausted".[157] Miéville was by his side when he died. His body was cremated and there was no funeral service.[158]
Godard has been recognised as one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century and one of the leaders of the French New Wave.[159]
Film critic Pauline Kael suggests that what made young people so drawn to Godard was the disturbing quality of this work.[160]
In 1969, film criticRoger Ebert wrote about Godard's importance in cinema:
Godard is a director of the very first rank; no other director in the 1960s has had more influence on the development of the feature-length film. LikeJoyce in fiction orBeckett in theater, he is a pioneer whose present work is not acceptable to present audiences. But his influence on other directors is gradually creating and educating an audience that will, perhaps in the next generation, be able to look back at his films and see that this is where their cinema began.[161]
In 2001, Ebert recalled his early days as a critic, writing "As much as we talked aboutTarantino afterPulp Fiction, we talked about Godard in those days."[162] Tarantino named his production companyA Band Apart, a reference to Godard's1964 film.[44] Tarantino says that "To me Godard did to movies whatBob Dylan did to music. They both revolutionized their forms."[15]
Godard's works and innovations have received praise from notable directors such asMichelangelo Antonioni,[163]Satyajit Ray,[164] andGeorge Lucas.[165]Fritz Lang agreed to take part in Godard's filmLe Mépris due to his admiration of Godard as a director.[166]Akira Kurosawa listedBreathless as one of his 100 favourite films.[167][168]Ingmar Bergman strongly disliked Godard, stating: "I've never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual and completely dead. Cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. He's made his films for the critics. One of the movies,Masculin Féminin (1966), was shot here in Sweden. It was mind-numbingly boring."[169]Orson Welles admired Godard as a director but criticized him as a thinker, tellingPeter Bogdanovich: "He is the definitiveinfluence if not really the first great film artist of this last decade, and his gifts as a director are enormous. I just can't take him very seriously as athinker—and that's where we seem to differ, becausehe does."[170][171]
David Thomson reached a similar conclusion, writing that "Godard's greatness rests in his grasping of the idea that films are made of moving images, of moments from films, of images projected in front of audiences" but that "He knows only cinema: on politics and real life he is childish and pretentious." Still, Thomson calls Godard's early films "a magnificent critical explanation of American movies" and "one of the inescapable bodies of work" and deserving of retrospectives.[172] Thomson includedPierrot le Fou on hisSight & Sound list.[173] Political activist, critic and filmmakerTariq Ali listed Godard's filmTout Va Bien as one of his ten favorite films of all time in the 2012Sight and Sound critics' poll.[174] American film criticArmond White listed Godard's filmNouvelle Vague as one of his top ten favorite films in the same poll.[175]Susan Sontag calledVivre sa vie "one of the most extraordinary, beautiful and original works of art I know of."[176] Four of Godard's films are included on the 2022 edition of theSight and Sound list of 100 Greatest Films:Breathless (38),Le Mépris (54),Histoire(s) du cinéma (78) andPierrot le Fou (85).[177]
The 60thNew York Film Festival paid tribute to Godard, who died earlier that year.[178]The Onion paid homage to him with the headline "Jean-Luc Godard Dies At End of Life In Uncharacteristically Linear Narrative Choice."[179]
Godard had a lasting friendship withManfred Eicher, founder and head of the German music labelECM Records.[207] The label released the soundtracks of Godard'sNouvelle Vague (ECM NewSeries 1600–01) andHistoire(s) du cinéma (ECM NewSeries 1706). This collaboration expanded over the years, leading to Godard's granting ECM permission to use stills from his films for album covers,[208] while Eicher took over the musical direction of Godard films such asAllemagne 90 neuf zéro,Hélas Pour Moi,JLG, andFor Ever Mozart. Tracks from ECM records have been used in his films; for example, the soundtrack forIn Praise of Love usesKetil Bjørnstad andDavid Darling's albumEpigraphs extensively. Godard also released on the label a collection of shorts he made with Anne-Marie Miéville calledFour Short Films (ECM 5001).[209]
Among the ECM album covers with Godard's film stills are these:[210]
^abBernstein, Adam (13 September 2022)."Jean-Luc Godard, rule-breaking master of French cinema, dies at 91".The Washington Post.Archived from the original on 3 December 2022. Retrieved21 September 2022.His legal and tax adviser, Patrick Jeanneret, confirmed the cause was assisted suicide and said a recent medical report indicated Mr. Godard had what he termed "multiple invalidating pathologies." ... Since the early 1970s, he had been the companion and collaborator of the Swiss filmmaker Anne-Marie Miéville, his only immediate survivor. They married about 10 years ago, Jeanneret said.
^Mulvey, Laura (1996). "The Hole and the Zero: Godard's Visions of Femininity".Fetishism and Curiosity. Bloomington; London: Indiana University Press; British Film Institute. p. 94.ISBN978-0-253-33211-0.OCLC1408341128.
^Moullet, Luc (2005)."Jean-Luc Godard". In Jim Hillier (ed.).Cahiers du cinéma: 1960–1968. New Wave, New Cinema, Re-evaluating Hollywood. Vol. 2. Milton Park, Oxford, UK: Routledge. pp. 35–48.ISBN0-415-15106-6.
^"Ciak News 295: cos'è il cinema" (in Italian). Radiotelevisione svizzera. 5 September 2015.Archived from the original on 22 November 2018. Retrieved26 October 2016.
^Wheeler W. Dixon (6 March 1997).The Films of Jean-Luc Godard. State University of New York Press. p. 42.ISBN9780791432860.Fritz Lang accepted because he admired Godard's work as a director, and agreed to act in thefilm, but to act only, and not interfere with Godard's creative process as a filmmaker.
^Glenn Kenny (2 November 2018)."The Other Side of the Wind".RogerEbert.com LLC.Archived from the original on 14 September 2022. Retrieved14 September 2022.In that book Welles says of Godard, "What's most admirable about him is his marvelous contempt for the machinery of movies and even movies themselves—a kind of anarchistic, nihilistic contempt for the medium—which, when he's at his best and most vigorous, is very exciting."
^"Armond White". British Film Institute. Archived fromthe original on 18 August 2016. Retrieved14 September 2022.Godard's rarely screened Nouvelle Vague looms in my memory as his grandest work – grander and more important still due to cinephilia's recent decline.
^Sontag, Susan (Summer–Autumn 1964). "On Godard's Vivre sa vie".Moviegoer. No. 2. p. 9.
Nicole Brenez, David Faroult, Michael Temple, James E. Williams, Michael Witt (eds.) (2007).Jean-Luc Godard: Documents. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou.
Brody, Richard (2008).Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard. Macmillan.ISBN978-0-8050-6886-3.
Dixon, Wheeler Winston.The Films of Jean-Luc Godard. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.
Stevenson, Diane. "Godard and Bazin" in the Andre Bazin special issue, Jeffrey Crouse (ed.),Film International, Issue 30, Vol. 5, No. 6, 2007, pp. 32–40.
Temple, Michael. Williams, James S. Witt, Michael (eds.) 2007.For Ever Godard. London: Black Dog Publishing.
Temple, Michael and Williams, James S. (eds.) (2000).The Cinema Alone: Essays on the Work of Jean-Luc Godard 1985–2000. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Usher, Phillip John (2009). "De Sexe Incertain: Masculin, Féminin de Godard".French Forum, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 97–112.
