Jean Luc Godard No More

Godard No More 

Jean-Luc Godard, is known as “enfant terrible” of the French New Wave who revolutionized popular cinema in 1960 with his first feature, “Breathless,” and stood for years among the film world’s most influential directors. He took last breathe today in Switzerland . He was 91. 

Over a long career that began in the 1950s as a film critic, Godard was perhaps the most boundary-breaking director among New Wave filmmakers who rewrote the rules for camera, sound and narrative — rebelling against an earlier tradition of more formulaic storytelling. 

In the year 1950, Godard founded a "Gazette du cinéma" with Rivette and Rohmer, which published five issues between May and November. He wrote a number of articles for the journal, often using the pseudonym 'Hans Lucas'. In 1952, he was film critic of 'Les cahiers du cinéma' . Godard redefined the way we look at film. He made the language of film a real part of his narratives. 

Around 1956 Traveled South America and thereafter for few months worked as laborer at a Swiss Dam. 

In 1959, he  worked with Truffaut on the weekly publication "Temps de Paris". And wrote a gossip column for the journal. Besides that started  writing scenarios for films.

As a Film Maker he experimented with medium as no other maker did earlier. He  emerged on the international filmmaking scene with his most famous and perhaps best film, "Breathless" (1960), a celebration of the American film noir that also served as the stylistic template for the rest of the sixties, widely considered to be his most fertile creative period. During that turbulent decade, Godard made no less than two films a year and sometime more, creating such experimental and increasingly politically-minded films as "Vivre sa vie" (My Life to Live") (1962), "Contempt" (1963), Bande à Part" ("Band of Outsiders") (1964) and "Alphaville" (1965), many of which starred his first wife, Anna Karina. After making the critically panned "Weekend" (1967), a disgruntled Godard left the filmmaking business altogether in order to make political films. Once that interest waned in 1972, he entered into a transitional period of video and television projects that eventually segued into a second period of narrative filmmaking that was more experimental and inaccessible than his previous work, though some critics declared this time as being more creatively fruitful. Chief among the works was the controversial "Hail Mary" (1985), a contemporary retelling of the biblical Joseph and Mary story that was tagged by the Vatican as being blasphemous. Whether he was continuing his long love affair with film noir, as he did with "Detective" (1985), or trying new narrative techniques with the ambiguous "King Lear" (1987), Godard was not only a tireless experimenter with form and context, but also synonymous with the world of cinema itself. Godard influenced generations of directors from Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson to Robert Altman, the maker of "M*A*S*H" and "The Player".

He is taught as a subject in all major Film Institutes across the globe. 

I watched Breathless for the umpteenth time again just a month back. It still leaps off the screen like few movies. That scene between them in the hotel: how many other directors could have managed that in so small a space and made it so captivating? "All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl," Godard  once proclaimed, in a nod to US actress Jean Seberg, the star of "Breathless".The film   was a fashion as well as a film landmark, her pixie haircut copied by millions bowled over by her effortless Parisian cool.

His two famous quotes are  often taken as the first lesson  to understand film making : A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end -- but not necessarily in that order," Godard later famously declared, and "every edit is a lie. 

RIP