Death of the Master of The Nouvelle Vague, of French Cinema

JEAN-LUC GODARD

3 December 1930 - 13 September 2022

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.”

— Jean-Luc Godard

American actress Jean Seberg in Godard's 'Breathless' (À Bout de Souffle)1958 

Jean-Luc and Anna Karina

"It was a strange love story from the beginning. I could see Jean-Luc (Godard) was looking at me all the time, and I was looking at him too, all day long. We were like animals. One night we were at this dinner in Lausanne. My boyfriend, who was a painter, was there too. And suddenly I felt something under the table – it was Jean-Luc’s hand. He gave me a piece of paper and then left to drive back to Geneva. I went into another room to see what he’d written.

It said, “I love you. Rendezvous at midnight at the Café de la Prez.” And then my boyfriend came into the room and demanded to see the piece of paper, and he took my arm and grabbed it and read it.

He said, “You’re not going.”

And I said, “I am.”

And he said, “But you can’t do this to me.”

I said, “But I’m in love too, so I’m going.”

But he still didn’t believe me. We drove back to Geneva and I started to pack my tiny suitcase.

He said, “Tell me you’re not going.”

And I said, “I’ve been in love with him since I saw him the second time. And I can’t do anything about it.”

It was like something electric. I walked there, and I remember my painter was running after me crying. I was, like, hypnotized – it never happened again to me in my life."

— Anna Karina

Brigitte Bardot 'Contempt' 1963

Picture: Jean-Luc Godard (died 13/9/22) by William Klein (died 10/09/22) two greats gone this month.

Alphaville 1965

• 1960 Breathless
• 1961 A Woman Is a Woman
• 1962 My Life to Live
• 1963 The Little Soldier
• 1963 The Carabineers
• 1963 Contempt
• 1964 Band of Outsiders
• 1964 A Married Woman
• 1965 Alphaville
• 1965 Pierrot le Fou
• 1966 Masculin Féminin
• 1966 Made in U.S.A.
• 1967 Two or Three Things I Know About Her
• 1967 La Chinoise
• 1967 Week-end
• 1968 A Film Like Any Other^[179]
• 1968 One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil)^[179]
• 1969 Joy of Learning
• 1969 British Sounds^[179]
• 1970 Wind from the East^[180]
• 1971 Struggle in Italy
• 1971 Vladimir et Rosa
• 1972 Tout va bien^[181]
• 1972 Letter to Jane^[181]
• 1975 Number Two
• 1976 Here and Elsewhere
• 1976/1978 How's It Going?
• 1980 Every Man for Himself
• 1982 Passion
• 1983 First Name: Carmen
• 1985 Hail Mary^[182]
• 1985 Detective^[182]
• 1987 King Lear^[183]
• 1987 Keep Your Right Up
• 1990 New Wave
• 1991 Germany Year 90 Nine Zero
• 1993 The Kids Play Russian
• 1993 Oh Woe Is Me
• 1994 JLG/JLG – Self-Portrait in December
• 1996 For Ever Mozart
• 2001 In Praise of Love
• 2004 Notre musique
• 2010 Film Socialisme
• 2014 Goodbye to Language
• 2018 The Image Book

In 1969, film critic Roger 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. Like Joyce in fiction or Beckett 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