‘In cinema, there was before Godard and after Godard’
Paul Schrader
Jean-Luc Godard – director, screenwriter, film critic, cinematic pioneer – died peacefully at the age of 91 on the 13th of September 2022. Godard’s passing was assisted by medical professionals in Switzerland, a family member commenting that Godard was ‘not sick, he was simply exhausted’. It was important to him that people know ‘it was his decision’. He died with his wife Anne-Marie at his side.
The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, announced on his twitter that the nation of France has ‘lost a national treasure, the eye of a genius’ and British writer Peter Bradshaw boldly but correctly stated that ‘the last great 20th-century modernist is dead’.
Filmmakers and cinema lovers also flocked to social media to pay their respects. Edgar Wright called Godard ‘one of the most influential, iconoclastic filmmakers of them all’, while director Mark Cousins praised Godard’s shattering of ‘complacent cinema like a hammer on glass’.
Even cinema royalty Martin Scorsese weighed in, stating for The Guardian that ‘No one was as daring as Godard’. He further lamented that ‘he never made a picture that settled into any one rhythm or mood or point of view, and his films never lulled you into a dream state. They woke you up. They still do – and they always will. It’s difficult to think that he’s gone. But if any artist can be said to have left traces of his own presence in his art, it’s Godard’.
If you’re under the age of 30 or have never watched a European film in your life, you may be wondering ‘who the hell is Jean-Luc Godard?’ Well, the interesting thing is that you may not have heard of him, but his influence and legacy have undoubtedly seeped into modern cinema – you’ve probably been touched by Godard (cheeky, behave) but been unaware of it.
Jean-Luc Godard was a French-Swiss film director who rose to fame in the late 1950s/early 1960s as a founding member of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, cinema movement. This movement was a radical new way of making, watching, and experiencing films in the culture-starved, post-war Europe of the 1950s. These alternative, independent filmmakers emphasized personal style and artistic vision over studio-led stories and what films were worth commercially/financially. They revolutionized the way spectators passively consumed Hollywood-esq. films by calling direct attention to filmmaking techniques within their films and forcing you to really think and feel not only about what you’re watching, but your own lives.
It is not an overstatement to say that Godard was a trailblazing force of nature and a standout figure of this movement. His films challenged the classical conventions of Hollywood cinema through their unique, self-aware style and structure. They reflect Godard’s personal vast knowledge of film history and expertly, passionately, and insightfully explore the fragility of humanity’s connection to others and the existential dread that permeated the 1960s.
Jean-Luc Godard was born in 1930 in Paris. He grew up by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. An intelligent young man and an avid reader, Godard first tried his hand at higher education in Paris, focusing on mathematics, but became quickly addicted to the cinema-obsessed culture that was growing around him. He watched films with every spare second he had and failed his exams as a result. Forced to move back to Geneva with his parents, he tried painting but eventually returned to Paris where he studied for an Ethnology degree. His degree soon bled into his love of cinema; he became fascinated by the work of anthropologist Jean Rouch, who was a key pioneer of the documentary-style cinéma vérité approach to filmmaking.
Godard’s love of cinema took over his entire life. He abandoned his degree and applied to Paris’s leading film school. With no experience or formal film education, he was rejected but that didn’t dissuade him. He began to read essays by famed film scholars and watched films obsessively at Henri Langlois’ Cinématheque Francais and the Ciné-club Quarter Latin. One of the scholars he admired, Maurice Schérer, was often there to introduce films and engage in passionate debate with other spectators.
In 1949 Schérer began publishing a magazine called La Gazette du cinema, which Godard contributed to regularly. He made fast friends with future French New Wave filmmakers Francois Truffaut and Jacques Rivette, who he would watch three or four films a day with, and helped his contemporaries make their first short films. One film Rivette made, Quadrille, was funded through money Godard made by stealing and selling his grandfather’s first edition copies of Paul Valery’s works.
Rather than making his own films, Godard wrote for another film magazine instead – the Cahiers Du Cinéma, founded by film scholar Andre Bazin. Although the magazine featured articles mostly against Classic Hollywood Cinema, Godard, using a fake name, defended traditional techniques and advocated for ways in which spectators could see the artistic vision of the director regardless of studio-led constraints. He defended the likes of Otto Preminger and Howard Hawks, and overtly praised the All-American Hero Humphrey Bogart. Godard believed that you could appreciate the value of techniques without using them yourself.
1960 was the year Godard’s life changed.
He released Breathless, a low-budget, day-to-day scripted film about the nihilistic love affair between a petty thief played by Jean-Paul Belmondo and a cynical yet hopeful newspaper vendor played by Jean Seberg.
The film used natural lighting, shot with hand-held cameras on location in Paris (without permits), encouraged spontaneous, unscripted dialogue, and was purposely inconsistent with its cuts and narrative style, drawing the audience’s attention to the people behind the camera as well as the characters on the screen. As Kevin Macdonald says, ‘Godard changed cinema. He made it self-conscious as no one had before – you always knew you were watching a film when you watched his films, like a Brecht for the movies. You are always aware of the process and underpinnings of his films – and their influences’. He sought to fully immerse people in the entire experience of a film.
And it worked.
‘Modern movies begin here. No debut film
Roger Ebert
since Citizen Kane in 1942 has been as influential’
While the plot itself was not unique, the way it was told was. It was seen by over 2 million people in France when it was first released, and it has come to be considered one of the best films ever made. The film has been compared to free-jazz improvisation, and been called ‘a daring work of art’ with ‘cool detachment’, a relatable ‘dismissal of authority’ and praised for its ‘narcissistic young heroes [who] are obsessed with themselves and seem oblivious to the larger society’.
Like F. Scott Fitzgerald who captured the decadence of the Roaring Twenties in The Great Gatsby, Godard’s Breathless is a time capsule of post-war French existentialism and nihilism, the tension between ideology and individuality, and the difficulty distinguishing your experience of reality from what others tell you is reality.
From then on, Godard made film after film. A Woman is a Woman, My Life to Live, Band of Outsiders, A Married Woman, Alphaville, Two or Three Things I know about Her, Sympathy for the Devil, One American Movie, Wind from the East, Struggles in Italy, King Lear, Passion…the list goes on and on and on. He continued to work right up until 2018, when his health began to decline. His filmography varies in style, quality and success – be that artistically successful or financially – which makes it one of the more interesting filmographies of any director.
He won numerous awards, including honorary Césars (1987 and 1998), an honorary Academy Award (2010), and the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale for theatre/film (2002).
Godard has left a legacy unmatched by any other independent filmmaker. The outpouring of grief and tributes from the cinema-loving community is a testament not only to his talent and intelligence, but for his passion for cinema that he shared with us.
He will be missed.
Written by Victoria Brown | BanterFlix Website Editor & Resident Disney Queen