One of the world’s premier filmmakers and the last of his groundbreaking peers in French cinema (the ‘French New Wave’), Jean-Luc Godard has cut to black. For 6 decades, Godard did not simply make movies, he continually upended what movies were. In his first full-length film, Breathless, he jumbled the normal rules of editing to reflect the disrupted moral psyche of the film’s gangster protagonist, famously played by Jean-Paul Belmondo. In 2014, he toyed with the conventions of 3D filmmaking in Goodbye to Language, widening the split between the two camera angles, and then squeezing it back together, to explore as no one else was willing to do in commercial films what the parameters of 3D playback could be, using the 3D process as a metaphor for quantum nature of reality. And in between, he astonished filmgoers again and again be refusing to play by the rules, and by discovering the potentials that no one realized film could achieve, not only cinematically, but politically. His most challenging films were beyond left wing platitudes, genuinely embracing maoism, marxism and sheer anarchy, and then undercutting those same ideals to tack in other different directions. Whether it was politics, or art, or literature, or movies, or the relationships between men and women, his films offered both a starting point for contemplation, and revelation after revelation, on perspective. At one point he suggested that video was to film as Cain was to Abel, and he took off in that direction for a while, making movies on everything from professional video cameras to cell phones.
What I would like to offer here, in honor of his passing, is a simple pathway to access Godard’s movies and to enjoy them. The important thing is to begin with something fun, because if you dive straight in to his most celebrated works, you might well find them mind-numbingly dull—because you haven’t gotten onto his wavelength yet—or utterly confusing because you aren’t oriented to his syntax.
In other words, don’t start with Breathless, because it will seem distracted and pointless, more like people playacting criminals than an actual crime drama. Instead, start with his next film, A Woman Is a Woman, which is a delightful treat about a romantic triangle, which, at the same time, celebrates Hollywood musicals and embraces ways in which literature can be integrated with film—at one point, instead of arguing, a couple thrusts the titles of books at one another. Then move on to another fun film, Pierrot Le Fou, which still may seem like it is about people playacting at being criminals (while the rest of the world proceed normally in the background, oblivious to their activities), but in widescreen and fabulous colors that are so delectable you can tolerate and even feel amused by the references to the Vietnam War and the threats of capitalism that are interspersed with the supposed tragedy of being on the run for a crime. His films Une Femme Mariée, Masculin Féminin and Vivre Sa Vie all have accessible narratives focussing on romantic relationships that will at the same time acclimate you to his best known cinematic tricks—obscuring or eliminating the audio track, imposing text on the images (a Godard movie is very different to a viewer reading subtitles than it is to a viewer who can follow the original French), and otherwise advancing what there is of a plot in subtle and obscure ways. The final transition would then be to sit back with 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, a clever film about prostitution and Paris that is astonishing in its technical execution, most famously when a closeup of a swirling cup of coffee that so tight (in widescreen, yet) it looks instead like the universe. Now you can watch Breathless and have a great time, and also tackle his two other masterpieces, Contempt and Weekend. The latter two can be challenging because there are very long scenes of conversation (or recitation) where very little happens, but there are also scenes where quite a bit happens. Contempt is grand fun, because Godard was sort of thumbing his nose at his producers when he made it, and so its budget is all there on the screen, accomplishing nothing, beautifully, while telling the story of filmmakers trying to get a movie underway. Weekend begins with a crowd-pleasing pornagraphic voiceover, followed by the world’s most epic single-lane traffic jam. After a lengthy piano concert in a barnyard, and a few other absurdities, it becomes more challenging, depicting a group of ‘revolutionaries’ who are reading their manifestos and talking about their strategies for revolt, but there is enough activity to sustain a viewer’s interest if the shifts in tone have not felt alienating. If you like the Rolling Stones, then don’t miss Sympathy for the Devil One plus One, which has the group working on that title song over and over again, with digressions containing more political manifestos and other queries about existence, pop music, commerce and other topics.
And that was only about half of his wonderful movies from the Sixties. He has a great many more from the Seventies (Jane Fonda and Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien, about a strike, but with some amazing tracking shots and a good deal of humor), although they became more challenging as he dove into the intricacies of marxism and political contrarianism. Le Vent d'Est is for die hard fans only, although the abstract nature of its discourse is in many ways unforgettable, as is simply the challenge of watching it from beginning to end. It was meant to be a Spaghetti Western, but he gets sidetracked. In the Eighties, he complete reinvented himself, discarding his most extreme experimentations for at least the semblance of commercialism, including an incredible examination of cinematography and lighting and its relationship to classical art (Passion), making a kind of modern day gangster version of Carmen (First Name: Carmen), a marvelously profane interpretation of the Immaculate Conception (Hail Mary), and kind of a take on King Lear...with a Woody Allen cameo. Then in the Nineties and beyond, it all seemed to come together as he shifted comfortably from actual narrative films (In Praise of Love begins slowly and in black and white, but shifts to color and becomes a rather amazing exploration of victimization in Kosovo, so that you want to begin watching it again immediately after it is over; the equally intriguing Notre Musique is also about Kosovo) to video experimentation and the manipulation of existing and found footage.
It is said that there was nothing new in film after about the first ten years of sound, but Godard repeatedly found something unique in the way that images and noises are combined to stimulate a viewer’s thoughts and to carry if not a narrative, then a line of profound thought that makes a viewer feel at one with the screen. His references were encyclopedic, his visions were indelible and the joy he found in creating
motion pictures was infectious. He leaves behind a galley of work so vast and comprehensive that it would take more than a single lifetime to truly comprehend and appreciate all that he had to offer.