R.I.P. Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless and Goodbye To Language director
The critic, filmmaker, and French New Wave luminary, leaves behind an extraordinary and inspiring body of work
Film News Jean-Luc Godard
In Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film Breathless, Parvulesco the Writer—played by fellow filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville—utters one of the most famous lines in Godard’s expansive filmography: when asked by Patricia (Jean Seberg) “what’s your greatest ambition,” Parvulesco says, “to become immortal, and then die.” Godard achieved that goal multiple times over by September 13, when his longtime legal adviser, Patrick Jeanneret, announced that the filmmaker and iconoclast died by assisted suicide at age 91.
Born in 1930, Godard was a film critic whose body of work as a writer and director would later be called by Filmmaker Magazine “arguably the most influential in the history of cinema.” This was not merely because he worked steadily from the mid-1950s until close to his death, but he also changed the form of filmmaking itself, examining and deconstructing the form and language of the medium in transgressive and irreversible ways. As a writer for the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, he helped advance auteur theory with his writing about the work of Orson Welles, Vittorio De Sica, and Howard Hawks, whom he called “the greatest American artist.” He would within a few years join their ranks with his 1960 film Breathless, which not only generated international fame but offered the visual storytelling medium the “jump cut,” which not only he but filmmakers everywhere would come to use as part of their creative arsenal.
Even as Godard borrowed from the luminaries he revered, he reinvented their influence to tell stories that were at once steeped in genre convention and deeply personal. This paved the way for filmmaking not as an establishment platform but one for youth as a culture—perhaps not unlike The Velvet Underground’s first album, Breathless was the movie that made thousands of young people want to make films. At the same time he cultivated an almost mythic persona, he rarely granted interviews, and when he did they were filled with misdirection or cryptic revelations.
He did not spare his film critic’s acerbic reactions to the work of others that he did not like, condemning celebrated films like Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List as “phony.” And yet he was revered by generations of filmmakers, not simply in examples like providing the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s longtime production company (A Band Apart Films), but by spouting dictums adopted thousands of times over as a rallying cry for the creatively flush but cash deficient: “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.”
His last feature-length film, Le Livre ‘image, was released in 2018, after more than 70 years as a director. Godard’s work has been written about at least as much as he has shaped the form of filmmaking itself, but even in his absence, he remains an icon whose work challenges viewers as much as it exhilarates, and will continue to unearth new truths about the medium, its audience, and himself for decades to come.
23 Comments
I’ve seen it over and over and over again and now I gotta go watch it again. Easily my favorite Godard film, although I have a soft spot for the endlessly bonkers and interesting Histoire(s) du cinéma collages. Godard invented the pompous youtube video essay decades earlier! What a mensch.
I have to wonder to what degree calling Schindler’s List “phony” was just taking the piss, or if he really believed that. Either way, it’s a good reminder that what may seem sincere and authentic in one culture can be seen as weird or phony by another.Anyway, RIP. I find all your work totally inscrutable but I can’t deny your impact on filmmaking.
“Yes. Most of the time there is no mystery at all, and no beauty—just makeup. Schindler’s List is a good example of making up reality. It’s Max Factor. It’s color stock described in black and white, because labs can’t afford to make real black and white. Spielberg thinks black and white is more serious than color. Of course you can do a movie in black and white today, but it’s difficult, and black and white is more expensive than color. So he keeps faithful to his system—it’s phony thinking. To him it’s not phony, I think he’s honest to himself, but he’s not very intelligent, so it’s a phony result. I saw a documentary, not a good one, but at least you get the real facts about Schindler. [Spielberg] used this man and this story and all the Jewish tragedy as if it were a big orchestra, to make a stereophonic sound from a simple story.”https://www.filmcomment.com/article/jean-luc-godard-interview-nouvelle-vague-histoires-du-cinema-helas-pour-moi/Seems mostly reasonable to me.For what it’s worth, Kubrick and at least one Jewish Nobel winner weren’t super impressed by Schindler’s List either.
I’d consider his criticism a lot more useful if it wasn’t half insults. “He’s not very intelligent”? Steven Spielberg? Yeah, okay. /rolleyes
To me, the most incisive critiques are both critical and respectful. His just seemed dismissive and sometimes mean-spirited.He was definitely a genius from a filmmaking perspective and modern fimmaking wouldn’t be what it is without his contributions. RIP Jean-Luc Godard.
Right? I mean someone can be a genius filmmaker and also sometimes be an asshole or make ill-considered statements.
Half?You picked the ONE line that was an insult in an otherwise pretty reasonable explanation about why he thought the film was phony (in his second language)But you’re clearly a Spielberg stan (otherwise why bring up Spielberg in this article?)… so enjoy your day.Note: I think French New Wave stuff is “meh”… I was just intrigued by the SL take and looked into it.
“Spielberg stan” Yes, that’s the only possible explanation. /rolls eyes, ignores you forever
I will miss your deep insight soooo much. Whatever will I do now that you’ve cut me off?!?!You can barely count (“Half of his comments were insults”)/ rolls eyes in a way that super cool and devastating to everyone who sees it (lol)
But you’re clearly a Spielberg stan{citation needed}
Why bring up Spielberg in an article about Godard?Maybe I was wrong… maybe the guy just hates Godard?
Godard was also famous for being a film critic, and one of his more infamous criticisms was of the acclaimed film Schindler’s List. Which was directed by (checks notes) some guy named Steven Spielberg. the guy just hates GodardSure, Jan.
I mean, he isn’t. His interviews were never interesting. That’s ok, it’s enough to be a hugely successful filmmaker. Being witty and brilliant was never on the cards for him.
After all, being witty in interviews is the only form of intelligence.
Sounds accurate.
“Goodbye to Language”? Let’s not remember him that way.
I figured he had been dead for years. 91 is kinda an amazing run for someone part of the French New Wave. Pretty sure you were required by law to be smoking at all times
I’m starting to think that Gauloises and black coffee is the secret to longevity. Jeanne Moreau made it to 89, Belmondo 88, Trintignant 91, Rivette 87, Varda 90, Resnais 91. And Delon 86 and Bardot 87 are still with us! Truffaut is one of the few to die young.
My grandfather lived to 93 thanks to black coffee. And my great-grandfather was 102. You’re onto something.
Although I often find his films high-handed and hectoring (especially the Maoist-period stuff), he was undeniably one of the most inventive and influential directors in 20th-century cinema. And has any single filmmaker had as impressive a decade as Godard in the 60s? Just insane.
Le petit soldat rules. And everyone loves Alphaville, of course.