Profile of Jean-Luc Godard on Famous Like Me

Jean-Luc Godard (born December 3, 1930) is a Franco-Swiss filmmaker and one of the most influential members of the Nouvelle Vague, or "French New Wave".

Born in Paris to Franco-Swiss parents, he was educated in Lyon, later studying at the Lycée Rohmer, and the Sorbonne in Paris. During his time at the Sorbonne, he became involved with the young group of filmmakers and theorists that gave birth to the New Wave.

Known for stylistic implementations that challenged, at their focus, the conventions of Hollywood cinema, he became universally recognized as the most audacious and most radical of the New Wave filmmakers. He adopted a position in filmmaking that was unambiguously political. His work reflected a fervent knowledge of film history, a comprehensive understanding of existential and Marxist philosophy, and a scholarly disposition that placed him as the lone filmmaker among the public intellectuals of the Rive Gauche.

Cahiers and early films

After attending school in Lyon, Godard returned to Paris in 1948 and began to attend the Lycée Rohmer, a year before enrolling at the Sorbonne to study anthropology. It was there, in the Latin Quarter of Paris just prior to 1950, that Paris ciné-clubs were gaining prominence. Godard began attending, where he soon met the man who was perhaps most responsible for the birth of the New Wave, André Bazin, as well as those who would become his contemporaries, including Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Jacques Rozier, and Jacques Demy.

His approach to film began in the field of criticism. Along with Eric Rohmer and Rivette, he founded the film journal, Gazette du cinéma, which saw publication of five issues in 1950. When André Bazin founded his critical magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951, Godard, with Rivette and Rohmer, were among the first writers. Most of the writers for Cahiers du cinéma started making some brief forays into film direction in the years before 1960.

Godard, while taking a job as a construction worker on a dam in 1953, shot a documerntary about the building called, Opération béton (1955). As he continued to work for Cahiers, he made Une femme coquette (1956), a ten-minute black and white picture, Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick (1957), another short fiction piece, and Une histoire d'eau (1958), which was created largely out of footage shot by Truffaut that had gone unused. In 1958 Godard, with a cast that included Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anne Colette, made his last short before gaining notoriety as a filmmaker, Charlotte et son Jules, an homage to Jean Cocteau.

Cinematic period

The Godard canon has never been able to escape the critical desire to distinguish between, and in turn label, its visible periods. The first of which, spanning roughly from the onset of his filmmaking career and his first feature, À bout de souffle (1960), through to 1967's Week End, has been referred to as his productive, narrative, and even conventional period. The most fitting label for the period, however, is perhaps his cinematic period. The entire period is made up of films that primarily reference film history. In this sense, the films themselves are particularly cinematic. Furthermore, the term works in contrast to the period that immediately followed, in which Godard ideologically denounced so much of cinema’s history as "bourgeois" and therefore without merit.

Films

His first major feature film, A bout de souffle (1960), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, was a seminal work of the New Wave. It was a key determiner of the New Wave's style, incorporating quotation of extensive elements of culture — specifically American cinema. The distinct style of the film was manifest in its continuous jump-cuts in editing, use of real locations rather than sets, and freedom from convention with character asides and broken eye line matches. The film had been suggested by Francois Truffaut, who both wrote the film, as well as introduced Godard to the producer who would in turn fund it, Georges de Beauregard.

The same year, Godard made Le Petit Soldat, dealing with the Algerian War of Independence. Most notably, it was the first collaboration between Godard and Danish-born actress Anna Karina, whom he was later to marry. The film, due to its political nature, was banned from French theaters until 1963. Karina appeared again, along with Belmondo, in Une femme est une femme (1961) (USA: A Woman Is a Woman), which was in many ways an homage to the American musical. Karina desires a child, prompting her to leave her boyfriend, played by actor Jean-Claude Brialy, and seek out his best friend (Belmondo) as its father.

Godard's next film, Vivre sa vie (1962) was one of his most popular among critics. Karina starred here as Nana, a mother and aspiring actress whose poor circumstances lead her to the life of a streetwalker. It is an episodic account of her trials. The film's style, much like that of A bout de souffle, boasted the type of experimentation that made the New Wave as influential as it was. Les Carabiniers (1963) was a film about the horror of war and its inherent unjustness. It was the influence and suggestion of Roberto Rossellini that led Godard to make the film. It follows two peasants who join the army of a king, only to find futility in the whole thing as the king reveals the deception of war-administrating leaders.

His most commercially successful film was Le Mépris (1963) (USA: Contempt), starring Michel Piccoli and one of France's biggest female stars, Brigitte Bardot. A coproduction between Italy and France, Le Mépris became known as one of the pinnacle films in filmic modernism with its profound self-reflexivity. The film follows Paul, a screenwriter played by Piccoli, who is commissioned by the arrogant American movie producer Prokosch (Jack Palance) to rewrite the script for an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey, which German director Fritz Lang has been filming. Lang's "high culture" interpretation of the story is lost on Prokosch, whose character is a firm indictment of the commercial motion picture hierarchy. Paul's marriage to Camille (Bardot) begins to fall apart during the course of shooting, bringing to the forefront of the film's themes the inability to reconcile love and labor.

In 1964, Godard and Karina formed a production company, Anouchka Films. He directed Bande à part, which was another collaboration between the two and described by Godard as "Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka." It plays on many conventions of the gangster film, following two young men looking to score on a heist and both falling for Karina. Une femme mariée (1964) followed Bande à part and found time for production while Godard was acquiring funding for Pierrot le fou. It was a slow, deliberate, toned-down black and white picture without even a real story. The film was entirely produced over the period of one month and exhibited a loose on-the-run formal quality unique to Godard. In 1965, Godard directed Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution. Alphaville was a futuristic blend of science fiction, detective, and satire filmmaking. Eddie Constantine starred as detective Lemmy Caution, sent into a city controlled by a giant computer named Alpha 60 to seek justice for the people oppressed by its fascist rule.

Pierrot le fou (1965) was one of his most cinematic pictures in terms of its complex storyline, distinctive personalities, and apolcalyptic ending. Gilles Jacob, an author, critic, and president of the Cannes Film Festival, called it both a "retrospective" and recapitulation in the way it played on so many of Godard’s earlier characters and themes. Pierrot overwhelms the viewer with vivid colors and constant narrative jumps through time and space. With an extensive cast and variety of locations, along with it being shot in color, the film was expensive enough to warrant significant problems with funding. It was a departure from Godard’s usual minimalism (that of À bout de souffle, Vivre sa vie, and Une femme mariée). He was forced to solicit the participation of the then-famous Jean-Paul Belmondo, with whom Godard had worked on two films previously, guaranteeing Godard the production capital necessary. Its release came shortly after the New Wave's acknowledged end, but by no means meant an end to Godard's innovative streak.

The first of the five last, and most politically stimulated films of the period was Masculin Féminin (1966). The film, based on two Guy de Maupassant stories, La Femme de Paul and Le Signe, was a study into contemporary French youth and its involvement with cultural politics. The credits announce the characters as "The children of Marx and Coca-Cola." Godard followed with Made in U.S.A. (1966), who's source material was Richard Stark's The Jugger, and Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1967) in which Maria Vlady portrays a woman leading a double life as housewife and prostitute.

La Chinoise (1967) saw Godard at his most politically forthright yet. The film focused on a group of students and engaged with the ideas coming out of the student communist groups in contemporary France. Released just before the May 1968 events, the film is thought to foreshadow the student rebellions that were to take place. Later in the same year, Godard made a more colorful, and still more political film, Week End. Week End follows a Parisian couple as they leave on a weekend trip across the French countryside to collect an inheritance. What ensues is a confrontation with the tragic flaws of the over-consuming bourgeoisie. The film contains some of the most written-about scenes in cinema's history, including a ten-minute tracking shot that gives us an unremitting traffic jam the couple finds itself in upon leaving the city, cited as a new technique that Godard has assimilated to deconstruct bourgeois trends, and the enigmatic and audacious ending title screen, reading "End of Cinema," appropriately marking the temporary end to Godard’s dabbles in narrative filmmaking.

Politics

Politics have never been far from the surface in Godard's films. One of his earliest features, Le Petit Soldat, dealt with the Algerian War of Independence, and was notable for its attempt to present the complexity of the dispute rather than pursue any specific ideological agenda. Along these lines, Les Caribiniers presents a fictional war, romanticized in the way its characters approach their service, but becomes a stiff anti-war metanym. In addition to the international conflicts Godard sought an artistic response to, he was also very concerned with the social problems in France. The earliest and best example of this is the potent portrayal of Nana, a prostitute played by Karina, in Vivre sa vie.

In 1960s Paris, the political milieu was not specifically overwhelmed by one specific movement. There was, however, a distinct post-war climate that was shaped by various international conflicts such as the colonialism in North Africa and Southeast Asia. The side that opposed such colonization included the intellectual elite, the upstart university youth, and the Parisian artists and writers who positioned themselves on the side of social reform and class equality. A large portion of this group had a particular affinity for the teachings of Karl Marx. Godard's Marxist disposition did not become abundently explicit until La Chinoise and Week End, but is evident in several films — namely Pierrot and Une femme mariée.

Vietnam

Godard produced several pieces that directly addressed the conflict in Vietnam. This was most notable in his participation in Chris Marker's film Loin du Vietnam Furthermore, there are two scenes in Pierrot that tackle the Vietnam issue. The first of which is a scene that takes place in the initial car ride between Ferdinand and Marianne. Over the car radio, the two hear the message "garrison massacred by the Viet Cong who lost 115 men". Marianne responds with an extended musing on the way the radio dehumanizes the Northern Vietnamese combatants.

The second important coda to Vietnam is when the lovers are accosted by a group of American sailors along the course of their liberating crime spree. The two’s immediate reaction, expressed by Marianne, is "Damn Americans!" an obvious outlet of the frustration so much of leftist France was feeling regarding the American hegemony. Ferdinand then reconsiders, "That’s OK, we’ll change our politics. We can put on a play. Maybe they’ll give us some dollars". Marianne is puzzled but Ferdinand suggests that something the Americans would like would be the Vietnam War. The ensuing sequence is that of their makeshift play, with Marianne dressing up as a stereotype Vietnamese woman and Ferdinand an American sailor.

Bertolt Brecht

Godard's engagement with German playwright Bertolt Brecht stems primarily from his attempt to transpose Brecht's theory of epic theatre and its prospect of alienating the viewer through a radical spearation of the elements of the medium (in Brecht's case theater, but in Godard's, film). Brecht's influence is inextricable from nearly all Godard's work, especially that before 1980, when Godard sought specific political ends through filmic expression.

It is as early as À bout de souffle that we see the suggestion of Brecht. The film's elliptical editing, which denies the viewer a fluid narrative as was typical in mainstream cinema, forces the viewers to take on more critical roles, connecting the pieces themselves and coming away with more investment in the work's content. Godard employs this device as well as several others including asynchronious sound and alarming title frames, with perhaps his favorite being the character aside. In so many of his most political pieces, specifically speaking of Week End, Pierrot le fou, and Le Chinoise, characters address the audience with thoughts, feelings, and instructions.

Marxism

A Marxist reading is available to most if not all of Godard’s early work, however, Godard’s direct interaction with Marxism does not become explicitly apparent until Week End in 1967, a film in which the name Marx is cited in conjunction with figures such as Jesus Christ. The refrain throughout the cinematic period of Godard is that of the bourgeoisie’s consumerism, the commodification of daily life and activity, and man’s alienation — all central issues of Marx’s condemning analysis of capitalism.

Philosopher and aesthetics scholar Jacques Ranciere, in an essay on Godard, states, "When in Pierrot le fou, 1965, a film without a clear political message, Belmondo played on the word 'scandal' and the 'freedom' that the Scandal girdle supposedly offered women, the context of a Marxist critique of commodification, of pop art derision at consumerism and of a feminist denunciation of women’s false 'liberation', was enough to foster a dialectical reading of the joke and the whole story". The way Godard treated politics in his cinematic period was in the context of a joke, a piece of art, or a relationship, presented to be used as tools of reference, romanticizing the Marxist rhetoric, rather than solely being tools of education.

Une femme mariée, made in 1964, is also structured around Marx's concept of commodity fetishism. Godard said of it that it is "a film in which individuals are considered as things, in which chases in a taxi alternate with ethological interviews, in which the spectacle of life is intermingled with its analysis". He was very conscious of the way he wished to portray the human being and the portrayal, as well as description, is overtly characteristic of Marx, who in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 gives one of his most nuanced elaborations, analyzing how the worker is alienated from his product, the object of his productive activity. Georges Sadoul, in his short rumination on the film, describes it as a "sociological study of the alienation of the modern woman".

Revolutionary period

The period that spans from May 1968 indistinctly into the 1970s has been subject to an even larger volume of inaccurate labeling. They include everything from his militant period, to his radical period, along with terms as precise as Maoist and vague as political. The term revolutionary, however, gives a more accurate impression than any other. The period saw Godard align himself with a specific revolution and employ a consistent revolutionary rhetoric.

Films

Amid the upheavals of the late 1960s Godard became interested in Maoist ideology. He formed the socialist-idealist Dziga-Vertov cinema group with Jean-Pierre Gorin and produced a number of shorts outlining his politics. In that period he travelled extensively and shot a number of films, most of which remained unfinished or were refused showings, but the dazzling anti-consumerist Week End was released in 1967. His films became intensely politicized and experimental, a phase that lasted until 1980.

Jean-Pierre Gorin

After the events of May 1968, when the city of Paris saw total upheaval in response to the "authoritarian de Gaulle republic", and Godard's professional objective was reconsidered, he began to collaborate with like minded individuals in the filmmaking arena. The most notable of these collaborations was with a young Maoist student, Jean-Pierre Gorin, who displayed a passion for cinema that grabbed Godard’s attention. Between 1968 and 1973, Godard and Gorin collaborated to make a total of five films with strong Maoist messages. The most prominent film from the collaboration was Tout va bien, which starred Jane Fonda and Yves Montand against their respective wills.

The Dziga Vertov group

The small group of Maoists that Godard had brought together, which included Gorin, adopted the name "The Dziga Vertov Group". Godard had a specific interest in Vertov, a filmmaker and contemporary of both the great Soviet montage theorists, as well as the Russian constructivist and avant-garde artists such as Alexander Rodchenko and Vladimir Tatlin. Part of Godard’s evidently political shift after May 1968 was from toward a proactive participation in the class struggle. Vertov’s films, particularly his most famous work, Man with the Movie Camera, were very much class-struggle center.

Later work

His return to somewhat more traditional fiction was marked with Sauve qui peut (1980), the first of a series of more mainstream films marked by autobiographical currents: for example Passion (1982), Lettre à Freddy Buache (1982), Prénom Carmen (1984), and Grandeur et décadence (1986). There was, though, another flurry of controversy with Marie, Je vous salue (1985), which was banned by the Catholic Church for alleged heresy, and also with King Lear (1987), an extraordinary but much-excoriated essay on Shakespeare and language.

His later films have been marked by great formal beauty and frequently a sense of requiem — films such as Nouvelle Vague (1990), the autobiographical JLG/JLG - autoportrait de décembre (1995), and For Ever Mozart (1996). Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991) was a quasi-sequel to Alphaville but done with an elegaic tone and focus on the inevitable decay of age. During the 1990s he also produced perhaps the most important work of his career in the multi-part series Histoires du Cinema, which combined all the innovations of his video work with a passionate engagement in the issues of twentieth-century history and the history of film itself.

Filmography

• Notre musique (2004)
• Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (2002) (segment Dans le noir du temps)
• Éloge de l'amour/In Praise of Love (2001)
• L'Origine du XXIème siècle/Origin of the 21st Century (2000)
• The Old Place (1998)
• For Ever Mozart (1996)
• Deux fois cinquante ans de cinéma français/2 x 50 Years of French Cinema (1995)
• JLG/JLG - autoportrait de décembre/JLG/JLG - Self-Portrait in December (1995)
• Les Enfants jouent à la Russie/The Kids Play Russian (1993)
• Hélas pour moi/Oh Woe Is Me (1993)
• Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro/Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991)
• Contre l'oubli/Lest We Forget (1991) (segment Pour Thomas Wainggai)
• Comment vont les enfants/How Are the Kids? (1990) (segment L'enfance de l'art)
• Nouvelle vague/New Wave (1990)
• Le Rapport Darty (1989)
• Histoire(s) du cinéma (in multiple parts, 1989-1989)
• The French as seen by... - (Le dernier mot) (1988)
• On s'est tous défilé (1988)
• Puissance de la parole (1988)
• Soigne ta droite/Keep Your Right Up! (1987)
• Aria (1987) (segment Armide)
• King Lear (1987)
• Meetin' WA/J.L.G. Meets W.A. (1986)
• Soft and Hard (1986)
• Détective (1985)
• Je vous salue, Marie/Hail Mary (1985)
• Prénom Carmen/First Name: Carmen (1983)
• Passion (1982)
• Lettre à Freddy Buache (1981)
• Sauve qui peut (la vie)/Every Man for Himself (U.S.)/Slow Motion (UK) (1979)
• Comment ça va? (1976)
• Ici et ailleurs/Here and Elsewhere (1976)
• Numéro deux (1975)
• Lettre à Jane/Letter to Jane (1972)
• Tout va bien (1972)
• One P.M. (1972) (abandoned by Godard, completed by D.A. Pennebaker)
• British Sounds/See You at Mao (U.S.) (1970)
• Amore e rabbia (1969) (segment L'Amour)
• Cinétracts (1968)
• Le Gai savoir (1968)
• Un film comme les autres (1968)
• One Plus One/Sympathy for the Devil (1968)
• Week End (1967)
• Loin du Vietnam/Far from Vietnam (1967) (segment Caméra-oeil)
• La Chinoise (1967)
• Le Plus vieux métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (1967) (segment Anticipation, ou l'amour en l'an 2000)
• 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle/ Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967)
• Made in U.S.A. (1966)
• Masculin, féminin (1966)
• Pierrot le fou (1965)
• Paris vu par.../Six in Paris (1965) (segment Montparnasse-Levallois)
• Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)
• Les Plus belles escroqueries du monde (1964) (segment Le Grand escroc)
• Bande à part/Band of Outsiders (U.S.)/The Outsiders (UK) (1964)
• Le Mépris/Contempt (1963)
• Les Carabiniers/The Riflemen (U.S.)/The Soldiers (UK) (1963)
• Le Petit soldat (1963)
• RoGoPaG/Laviamoci il cervello (1962) (segment Il Nuovo mondo)
• Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux / My Life to Live (U.S.) / It's My Life (UK) (1962)
• Les Sept péchés capitaux (1962) (segment La Paresse)
• Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961)
• Une histoire d'eau (1961)
• Charlotte et son Jules (1960)
• À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960)
• Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick/All the Boys Are Called Patrick (1959)
• Une femme coquette (1955)
• Opération béton (1954)

Bibliography

• Godard Bibliography (via UC Berkeley
• Loshitzky, Yosefa. The Radical Faces of Godard and Bertolucci.
• MacCabe, Colin. 2003. Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70. London: Bloomsbury.
• MacCabe, Colin. 1980. Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics. London: Macmillan.
• Morrey, Douglas. 2005. Jean-Luc Godard. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-6759-6
• Silverman, Kaja and Farocki, Harun. 1998. Speaking About Godard. New York: New York University Press.
• Sterrit, David. 1999. The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Temple, Michael and Williams, James S. (eds). 2000. The Cinema alone: Essays on the Work of Jean-Luc Godard 1985-2000. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

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