From an influential upper-class Swiss family, he discovered to his horror that his paternal grandfather was a close ally and sympathizer to the Nazis. It made Godard leave home in protest and later he had to fend for himself.
SUMIT DASGUPTA
“A film should have a beginning, a middle part, and an end but not necessarily in that order.” These words, although quite common nowadays in pretentious cinephile conventions, screenings or discussions were not as such when it was first uttered by Jean-Luc Godard in an interview back in the 60s. Godard was a Marxist, iconoclast, and creative filmmaker who refused to work under established conditions. He tore up the “rule book” of cinema and decided to do what his story demanded. I, with my limited knowledge and space in the vast world of Godard’s cinema, cannot even begin to put to words his influence. He definitely would be in the Mt. Rushmore of influential filmmakers, especially in the French New Wave film movement. Although, knowing Godard (not personally) he would detest such a parallel.
From an influential upper-class Swiss family, he discovered to his horror that his paternal grandfather was a close ally and sympathizer to the Nazis. It made Godard leave home in protest and later he had to fend for himself. A fascination for cinema blossomed at an early age. As a teenager, he went to a dam site, which was under construction at the time, and worked there as a helper while trying to chase the high of visual storytelling. The money earned was put into making a documentary film on the very construction of that dam and also a couple of short fiction films.
As a student in Paris, he came close to several of the aspiring young men who had been bitten by the cinema bug, so to speak. The Cinematheque in Paris had already established itself as the Mecca-Madina of cinema and for a lot of aspiring filmmakers, a natural destination. The director of the place, Henri Langlois, was all help, mentoring and guiding the young aspirants, including the late modernist himself. At the age of 19, Godard wrote his first film review which was noted for its mature views and an unrelenting passion for cinema.
I would like to bring to the reader’s attention the modernist line I used earlier. I, truly believe he was one of the last true living modernists of the 20th Century. Time spares no one and will stop for no one and he knew that. Over the decades of existence Godard almost became a cult leader, albeit a recluse cult leader. He was first hero-worshipped and adored and then shrugged at and yawned at as thoughtlessly mocked and jeered at as he was once unthinkingly swooned over. He was influential in the sense that French New Wave shook up Hollywood and all filmmakers; his rarefied experimental procedures have these days, migrated to video art or video essays.
Jean-Luc Godard is best known for his iconic, rebellious, and experimental film À Bout de Souffle aka Breathless, in 1960. Francois Truffaut, another master of the French New Wave devised the treatment of the film which follows an American woman in Paris, played by Jean Seberg, and her doomed-to-fail love affair with a too-cool-for-school tough guy on the run from the law, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo. Godard, out of sheer frustration decided to ditch traditional cinematic conventions to hook onto his wild digressions, offbeat, yet organic dialogues interaction, verité location work, non-linear narrative explorations, and jump cuts. Godard was able to inspire an entirely new language of filmmaking and editing.
The 1960s was a wonderful point in time when pictures and mottos could impact the world; he was making films with amazing familiarity and speed. Godard was chatty, easily elegant, the exemplification of cool. That image of him holding up a roll of film and reviewing it is well notorious - however crotchety unconvinced sorts contemplated whether he might have the option to see it better if he removed those dark glasses. Sexual morality, power dynamics, and the horrifying difficulty of closeness and love were his topics, joined by cerebral conversations with social systems. Bande à Section (1964) and A few Things I Am familiar with Her (1967) have his signature marked deep there. But for someone so influential he detested the idea of popularity. In multiple interviews, he had stated that he worked better if he was considered a failure, or boring. He insisted that cinema is dead, in a dramatic fashion, to be honest, his idea of cinema being a tool for expression was dead. He never wanted to make films, he wanted to make “cinema”. Something, a lot of hardworking filmmakers and pretentious cinephiles seem to talk about without completely understanding the crux of it.
Many simply gave up on Godard or were embarrassed at their extravagant former hero worship of a 60s figure, who declined to sell out, grow up, make commercial movies, or drift to the right, but carried on in the same old way. Some people thought he was not that great to be but an accidental genius. To that, I would say, Godard was never a thinking man’s filmmaker in an upper-lip sort of way, he believed films, were abstract thoughts put into imagery that can break out sound and image from the four walls of the screen. He was inspired by André Bazin, a founder of the New Wave movement said, to criticise was to intervene decisively in cinema, and to make films was to intervene in life itself. Cinema was a seizing of reality. Godard was trying to do just that. Satyajit Ray, on multiple occasions, said that he never liked all of Godard’s movies but clarifying you cannot simply “like” his movies because they are to be intellectually engaged with and to dichotomise a film into like and dislike is an aberration and Godard should not be treated as such.
Godard, on September 13 chose to end his life via assisted dying in Switzerland at the age of 91. He never had any intention to live life as a vegetable. His passing was peaceful and has been buried in an undisclosed location. He lived the way he died, on his terms. So, kind and curious reader, go watch Breathless if you haven’t already. Watch A Woman is a Woman, Masculin/Feminin, whatever you can get your hands on just to be reminded why his films were so impactful, ideological, and stylishly sexy.
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