Death of Jean-Luc Godard: the last wave of the New Wave is no more
Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard gives a press conference for the presentation of his new film Hélas pour moi, on August 27, 1993, in L'Isle-Jourdain.
© JEAN-PIERRE MULLER/AFP
Text by: Léopold Picot Follow
8 mins
Jean-Luc Godard died on Tuesday, September 13, 2022, at the age of 91.
The Swiss director and screenwriter
of Breathless
and
Le contempt
, a pioneer of the New Wave, was the last big name still alive in the most famous movement of French cinema.
However, the title of filmmaker, he did not want it.
He preferred that of critic, in one of those innumerable sidesteps so characteristic of the man with the cigar and dark glasses.
Advertising
Read more
For the generations born after 1990, the youngest, Jean-Luc Godard was the archetype of the artist of the post-war years as one fantasizes: an old language, reflections that flirt with intellectual masturbation, a style inimitable of his own and a disillusioned repartee.
In the many archive images, we discover the man smoking his cigar in the middle of the TV set, legs crossed in the middle of a reflexive tirade, all to his own character.
Because Jean-Luc Godard treated his life and the societies that surrounded him like his own films: with a critical eye, between impertinence and rejection.
Auto Crit
“
I am not a filmmaker, I am a critic
: I continue to make films as a critic.
[...]
When I film, I am in a critical state and therefore I have an automatic critical function.
The microscope is a critical instrument of reality
”, he explained in an exchange with the journalist Christian Defaye, in 1990. Critique, critique, critique.
It was his first paid job, after a quick stint as a cameraman on television which ended in a theft reported to the police – Godard had a tendency to kleptomania.
In 1952, at just 22, he wrote reviews for the review
Les Cahiers du cinema
, which had not yet celebrated its first birthday.
After a series of short films, he launched into feature films.
À bout de souffle
is a dense explosion, carried by an actor unknown to the public, whose rhythm only calms down to film love.
Jean-Paul Belmondo
, whom he had spotted a few years earlier and had already starred in a short film,
Charlotte et son jules
, burst onto the screen.
He will be his muse for three films, which will be enough to impose the actor and the director in French cinema.
Yet it was "
Bébel
" who refused to work for him fifteen years later, for fear that his cinematographic fantasies would get the better of his own career.
Because Godard is also criticized, often benevolently, sometimes forcefully, for his apparent casualness on the set, his concrete break with conventions and his outrageous, calculated character.
For his political commitment, too, which takes him away from the classic cinematographic circuit for a time.
The revolutionary bourgeois
In the midst of the societal revolution of the 1960s, between the fight against the Vietnam War in the United States and May 1968 in France, Jean-Luc Godard finds himself wanting to draw the world that is shaken, social movements, revolutions.
He became involved in the Parisian student revolt, then toured
Czechoslovakia in 1969
, a year after the "
Prague Spring
",
Pravda
, dissected capitalist British society in
British Sounds
, questioning the place of women and that of conscience of class.
british sounds by JL-Godard from chto delat on Vimeo.
After this very politically engaged period, the bourgeois origin of Jean-Luc Godard was systematically reminded of him.
Born into a wealthy family in the heart of Paris from rich Protestant bankers, he assumed his origins until the end of his life, in an interview with Darius Rochebin for Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS), in 2014: "
It was of the enlightened, open bourgeoisie, with a great love of literature.
[…]
I had a good and bad upbringing, there was something that helps me to be more free today… In certain aspects, the youth of today, I find them less free than this that I was in this absence of freedom at that time.
»
A difficult director
On the set, his mastery does not only inspire those around him: the fear is sometimes there, too.
That of disappointing, or doing wrong.
Jean-Luc Godard, a formidable critic, has his eyes everywhere, all the time, and his genius is matched only by his high standards of himself and others.
During the making of
Hélas pour moi
with Gérard Depardieu in 1992, the stagehand described the Godard method to the RTS journalist: “
Human communication is delicate, we have very little information in advance.
When you walk around with a lot of material, a light truck and a machinery, you have to have everything at your disposal without knowing what you're going to get out of the truck.
[...] He is a very sensitive person, and it is very difficult to have a human relationship with him to be able to be really in good conditions.
»
Jean-Luc Godard has sometimes been "
sadistic with actors
", dares Darius Rochebin.
"
I must have been, no doubt
," replies the director, laconic, before continuing: "
But sometimes actors are on the sidelines and you have to say to yourself, it doesn't matter whether they hurt or well, let them do, that's already it.
His pedagogical side sometimes goes too far for some.
Gérard Depardieu will tell
So Film
magazine : “
I don't give a damn about Godard.
Simply, you speak to me of the cinema.
Godard is not cinema, he is a teacher.
»
Behind the requirement, the small hands feast in front of the talent of the director.
"
He's a cinematic genius.
We had a bit of the image of someone who didn't prepare anything, but he's someone who masters everything, there's no coincidence, it's impressive
, ”says an assistant operator, too. on the set of
Alas for me.
An intensity at work praised by all those who have worked with him, from near and far, which clashes with the image of casualness that he builds for himself.
Escape from reality
Godard has never ceased to follow the evolution of cinema as a whole, without once losing his critical eye.
He who filmed reality like no one else, preferring the street and the outdoors to studios and sets,
and even shot in 3D
, gently mocks the ever-growing industry in an interview with Darius Rochebin: "
3D changes Nothing at all.
There is a directive: it is to go deeper, to be closer to reality.
But those who take refuge in reality are those who lack imagination.
»
This reflection, which may seem paradoxical given the director's attachment to reality, is not.
Jean-Luc Godard's cinema strives to remind the spectator of the existence of the film, through abrupt cuts in time, camera gazes and sometimes bypassing the fourth wall.
He thus strived to recall the status of his films as works of art.
An artistic work, with a direction, always, to transcend reality.
The director said in 2014 on RTS that he had seen
Avatar
, by James Cameron, and found "
there were things from time to time when they went through the trees, there was a little feeling like that... but there was no 'was going nowhere
'.
The cinema was for him a need, an outlet.
"
In a way, there is a certain cowardice in being an artist, since one can take refuge in art where, as Nietzsche said,
'we have art so as not to die of the truth',
but we we also have the art to live from the truth.
But I also quote Ernest Renan
:
"It could be that the truth is sad."
So it's better to laugh often
,” he declared to Christian Defaye in 1990. His mental illness may explain this protective vision of art.
Interviewed by Darius Rochebin in 2014, who asked him if he thought he was a genius, Godard defined himself as autistic: “
No, I would say… I am what is called, in science, a high-functioning autistic, and I prefer to say a level-case autistic!
»
Above all, we will remember Jean-Luc Godard's sensitivity on edge, his ability to film bodies and love, his ability to make the feeling of love carnal, to make it go beyond the screen to make the inactive and passive spectator vibrate.
His legendary phlegm and his repartee, too.
They can be summed up in two lines of dialogue, on RTS in 2014, at the twilight of his life:
- Did you feel like you were part of a revolution?
- Nope. A riot, perhaps.
Godard in a few key dates
December 3, 1930
: born in Paris, in the 12th arrondissement
1949
: Baccalaureate in hand and first reviews in
La Gazette du cinema
1954
: First amateur short film:
Concrete Operation
, on the Grande-Dixence dam site
June 1957:
Third professional short film,
Charlotte et son jules
, with Jean-Paul Belmondo
March 1960:
À Bout de Souffle,
first feature film and box office success with 2.2 million admissions in France and a Silver Bear for Best Director
1965:
Golden Bear for
Alphaville, a strange adventure by Lemmy Caution
October 1963:
Le Mépris
, with Brigitte Bardot, 1.5 million admissions in France
November 1965:
Pierrot Le Fou
, 1.3 million admissions in France
August 1967:
La Chinoise
, with his wife for the next three years, Anne Wiazemsky.
Political shift to the far left
May 1968:
Films the demonstrations, produces cine-tracts, and personally questions his celebrity
September 1984:
Hail Mary,
transposition of the Nativity to modern times
May 1985:
Detective
with Nathalie Baye, Johnny Hallyday, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Claude Brasseur
1987:
Honorary Cesar for his career
1998:
Honorary Cesar for his work
May 21, 2014:
Farewell to Language,
Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival
November 2018:
Le Livre d'image
, Jean-Luc Godard's latest film, special Palme d'or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival
►To listen also: All the cinemas of the world - Godard or the permanent revolution
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
Culture
Movie theater
Swiss
France