A leading figure of the French New Wave movement, Jean-Luc Godard died on 13 September aged 91.
Godard’s death was announced on Tuesday in French Newspaper, Liberation. His legal advisor, Patrick Jeanneret, confirmed that the director died of assisted suicide while surrounded by loved ones in the Swiss town of Rolle.
With a career spanning over half a century, Godard became a legendary figure in the film industry, revolutionising popular cinema in the 1960s with his politically charged narratives and experimental filming style.
Born in 1930, Godard grew up in Nyon, Switzerland before moving to Paris at 15-years-old to study at the prestigious Lycée Buffon, a school which specialised in physical and biological sciences. Despite registering for a certificate in anthropology at the Sorbonne, he was soon side-tracked from his studies when he began frequenting the Cine-Club du Quartier Latin. It was here that he met future New Wave directors François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette.
These gatherings ignited his passion for cinema, leading him to initially pursue a career in film criticism. Influenced by prominent film critic André Bazin, Godard began writing articles for new film magazines, eventually becoming the founding editor of his own film criticism journal, La Gazette du Cinéma, with Godard, Rohmer and Rivette in 1950.
From the outset, he showed a preference towards more avant-garde filmmaking styles, rejecting the staid traditions of European art cinema and instead championing American directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks.
This strong inclination towards the unorthodox would eventually translate into his own works. His first feature film À bout de souffle (1960) shocked contemporary audiences with its stylistic exuberance. His extensive use of jump cuts paired with an irregular use of dialogue embodied the verve of what would soon be recognised as French New Wave cinema: bold and fearless, yet informal and rough-edged.
His following works would continue to provoke audiences with an increasingly radical aesthetic and political output. His second feature film Le Petit Soldat was immediately banned in France until 1963 for its graphic depiction of torture and for dealing so overtly with the socio-political tensions of the Algerian War.
He went on to become director and writer of over 100 films including Une Femme Mariée (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Masculin Féminin (1966) and Weekend (1967).
Godard left an enduring mark on film, with tributes pouring in from across the world. In a tribute on social media, French President Emmanuel Macron wrote: “Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers, invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art. We have lost a national treasure, a man who had the vision of a genius.”
Words by Katie Heyes
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