Jean-Luc Godard

In an emblematic scene from “Breathless” (1960), Jean-Paul Belmondo suddenly addresses the camera directly. “If you don’t like the sea, if you don’t like the mountains, if you don’t like the city... then you can go f*** yourself!”

The first films produced by French-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, who died on 22 September 2022, caused quite a sensation in the 1960s. The unknown actors, raw dialogue, spontaneous script writing, filming from the shoulder and using natural light, and jerky editing, with the soundtrack seeming to evolve on its own, were all elements of Godard’s filmmaking that constantly subverted cinematic conventions. And the radical changes he implemented have since spread like a wave throughout the industry and to such an extent that his legacy is now everywhere.

His filmography is vast and multifaceted, including some 50 films and around ten documentaries. The director continued to create right up until he died, using every medium available, from smartphones and video to painting and collages. Godard was also well known for his pithy quips. “When you go to the cinema, you raise your head. When you watch television, you lower it,” he once remarked. The man loved tennis, but he also objected stridently to the way it was presented on TV. He came up with his own vision of documenting the sport. “I’d film some guy, any qualifier. He’s in Paris, doesn’t have much money, he’s looking for a cheap hotel. He takes the metro, he plays his match. And then he’s beaten. In the next round, I’d focus on the player who beat him, and then the winner of that match, which would inevitably take us to the final.”

And that was Godard the star, commenting on life with his Vaudois accent – a quaint reminder of his roots to anyone with an ear to hear it.