Director Jean-Luc Godard, figure of the New Wave, is dead

Published on: 09/13/2022 – 11:25 Modified on: 09/13/2022 – 11:29 Franco-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, figure of the New Wave who notably signed “A bout de souffle”, is dead at the age of 91. Like François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette or Éric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard began as a film critic in the 1950s before moving on to directing in 1959 with “A bout de souffle”, an iconic New Wave film starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. An iconoclastic filmmaker, we also owe him “Le Mépris”, in 1963, with Brigitte Bardot, or even “Pierrot le fou”, in 1965. “I rather made films like two or three jazz musicians : we give ourselves a theme, we play and then it gets organized”, he said. New “grammar” of cinema “A bout de souffle”, a film released in 1960, met with great success and installed the figure of Jean-Luc Godard, his headgear and his cigar curls, in the sometimes too smooth landscape of the cinema. French and international.”I thought I was filming ‘The Son of Scarface’ or ‘The Return of Scarface’, and I understood that I had rather shot ‘Alice in Wonderland’, more or less”, had testified in 1968 Jean-Luc Godard, in his singular voice, about the story of Michel, an insolent young thug, and Patricia, an American student who, to make a little money, sells the Herald Tribune on the Champs- Élysées – a story that fascinated a generation of moviegoers. Jean-Luc Godard had invented a new “grammar” of cinema, and blew a wind of freedom reflecting the upheavals of an era. Jean-Luc Godard participated in May-68, filming the events, and demanded with others that the Cannes Film Festival be stopped “in solidarity with the students”. Tireless researcher of new artistic expressions Claiming, beyond the poetry of reality , a political cinema, Jean-Luc Godard, marked on the left, evoked in particular the Algerian war in “Le Petit Soldat”, released in 1963, during which he met Anna Karina, muse and ephemeral wife, who electrified with her presence several of his films: “A woman is a woman”, “Live your life”, “Bande à part”, “Alphaville” (Golden Bear in Berlin in 1965), “Pierrot le fou” and “Made in USA” .Controversial filmmaker, tireless researcher of new artistic expressions, such as video, we also owe him “Le Mépris”, in 1963, with Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli, a reflection on creation with the filmmaker Fritz Lang in his own role. The road movie “Pierrot le fou” (1965), with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, crowned his artistic career, which also drew on literature, from Rimbaud to Céline, on painting and on musical art. Godard, a god? In 2018, during the Cannes Film Festival, France 24 conducted its investigation into the possible immortality of Jean-Luc Godard. Guillaume Guguen wrote that “in Cannes, Jean-Luc Godard is a god. Just break down his name to prove it: god-ard (‘god’ means ‘god’ in English, and ‘ard’ is more simple, means ‘art’). For those who do not believe in the hidden meaning of the words (read Jacques Lacan), we have tried to gather other proofs of the divinity of the Swiss filmmaker.” Find this article here: >> Cannes , day 5: five reasons to think that Jean-Luc Godard is a godWith Reuters