It’s not easy to dive into the filmography of Jean-Luc Godard because his movies are not for entertainment purposes. Whether you agree with his propositions or not, the only truth is that auteur cinema, which treats its audience like adults, would not be what it is today without the radical director figure. With him began modernity.
‘At the End of the Escape’ (1959)
Filmed at the zero kilometer of Nouvelle Vague, today the equivalent of 61,000 francs, this story based on classic American cinema is based on a story by François Truffaut, who would eventually become Godard’s stylistic rival. Director – and cinematographer Raoul Coutard, together 18 films – develops and implements many forms of modern cinema here his legendary expression: “Tracking shooting is a moral issue”, meaning it affects all levels. Meanwhile, following Jean Seberg, who sells newspapers on the Champs-Elysées, the celebrity bought a wheelchair.
‘Band Apart’ (1962)
this favorite movie Quentin TarantinoThe title served to baptize the production company. Three student friends (Anna Karina, Claude Brasseur and Sami Frey) plot a heist while creating a love triangle. Along the way, history is served with some of the most memorable scenes in cinematic history: the dizzying visit to the Louvre, the minute of silence (with a couple) and, above all, the Madison moment honored in so many places. The movies and apparently were shot yesterday afternoon.
‘Live Your Life’ (1962)
Fetish is a film made by and for Anna Karina, an actress and Godard’s partner, in which she expresses her most tragic vein. The actress plays a role in a woman’s moral and psychological collapse, from her beginnings as a wife and housewife, to her inability to work as an actress, until she falls into the hands of a pimp who prostitutes her. Only Ingrid Bergman, under Rossellini’s direction, had achieved this spectacle of unbearable pain. There’s more to seeing Karina cry while watching Dreyer’s ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ in the cinema.
‘Pierrot, madman’ (1965)
Starring again with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Godard is building a much lighter film for him than ‘At the End of the Escape’, this time with a colorful and more pop willpower. It tells the story of the escape of a teacher who has lost the magic of his life, encountering an old love that will lead him to a life of guilt. While committing murder, the couple wonders about the meaning of life (any resemblance to Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ is no coincidence). If Godard started the Nouvelle Vague, he ended it with this movie that closed the game here.
‘La chinoise’ (1967)
A year before the French May, Godard carefully read Mao’s Red Book, then the Gospel of the nineties, and made this film that marked a Copernican spin on his career. The highly politicized author does not believe in the concept of individual authorship, which will eventually take place in the Dziga Vertov Group. The author’s films with ugly images and deliberately weak voices have now become filmed manifestos and essays.
‘Cinema history(s)’ (1988 – 1998)
The film critic Godard, or the film critic who makes the film, creates a personal 266-minute history of cinema that shoots out in all directions: music, photography, painting, by summing up his knowledge and thoughts in this documentary. , readings, in a fascinating collage. For Godard, cinema is a reflection of the luck and contradictions of the 20th century. A basic movie to understand the director.
‘Picture Book’ (2018)
Although in 2012 he billed his fascinating cinematographic testament at just 70 minutes with the title already telling ‘Say Goodbye’, in this other documentary, as he was already approaching 90, Godard shut down his filmography. A generous patchwork by the author colliding images of the pastTo demonstrate that we must have clear images to help us navigate the changing world, as in old Hollywood movies of the 1930s or French cinema. Genius and figure to the end.