Jean-Luc Godard

Born December 3, 1930 in Paris, the son of a doctor and a banker's daughter, Godard had his elementary and high school education in Switzerland and in Paris, then enrolled at the Sorbonne, ostensibly to study ethnology. During his university days he developed a passionate devotion to the cinema, spending endless hours at Left Bank cinema clubs and at the Cinémathčque Française, where in 1950 he met the critic André Bazin and future filmmakers François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and Claude Chabrol, with whom he would later form the nucleus of the French New Wave. Godard began contributing articles and film criticism for La Gazette du Cinéma, then Cahiers du Cinéma.

In 1951, Godard toured North and South America. Supporting himself with a variety of odd jobs, he continued watching films at a fanatical rate, and his articles for Cahiers began reflecting an enthusiastic admiration for little-known American directors of action films and at the same time a deep contempt for the traditional cinema, especially the commercial French film.

In 1954, Godard returned to Switzerland and remained there to work as a laborer on a dam project. With his earnings he bought himself a 35mm camera and made his first film, Opération Beton, a 20-minute short about the construction of the dam. Following four more shorts, Godard stunned the world with his first feature film, Breathless, released early in 1960. The film marked a significant break from orthodox cinema techniques, reshaping the traditional film syntax with its astonishing jump cuts and unsteady hand-held moving shots. It was a spontaneous, impulsive, vibrant, and totally original film that reflected the director's enchantment with the immediacy of the American gangster movie and his impatience with the laboriousness of the traditional techniques of quality cinema. It immediately established Godard as a leading spokesman of the Nouvelle Vague.

Godard's next film, Le Petit Soldat, was a savage exposition of the Algerian conflict and also the first of seven features to star his future wife Anna Karina. Karina next played a stripper in his A Woman Is a Woman (1961, re-released by Rialto Pictures in 2003) and a Paris prostitute in My Life to Live (1962). Les Carabiniers (1963) was an anti-war allegory that provoked violently hostile reaction from audiences. Its grainy dreariness stood in sharp contrast to the wide-screen color cinematography of Contempt (1963, re-released by Rialto & Strand Releasing in 1997 and again in 2008), which starred Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli.

With Band of Outsiders (1964, re-released by Rialto Pictures in 2001), Godard returned to the world of the gangster. A Married Woman (1964) was the study of an alienated Parisian woman. Alphaville (1965), Godard's only excursion into science fiction, was followed in the same year by Pierrot le Fou. Godard's impact on the cinema of the 60s was monumental and sweeping. He used the camera inventively, re-writing the syntax of films along the way.

Masculine Feminine (1966) was a free-form study of the mores of Parisian youth. Made in USA (1966) was based on an American potboiler. Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) told the story of a Paris housewife who moonlights as a prostitute. La Chinoise (1967) featured in the leading role actress Anne Wiazemsky, who became Godard's second wife. After Week End (1968), a new Godard surfaced, a revolutionary, didactic filmmaker who became obsessed with the spoken word and increasingly apathetic to cinema as a visual medium. He dedicated himself to making revolutionary films for revolutionary audiences.

In the late 70s Godard underwent yet another metamorphosis, rediscovering himself and his love of film. He refocused his sights on themes of universal humanistic concern in Every Man for Himself (1980), Passion (1982), and First Name: Carmen (1983). He even paid a renewed homage to American cinema in Détective (1985), but caused massive controversy with his Hail Mary! (1985). King Lear (1987) was an unsuccessful attempt to film Shakespeare. Soigne ta droite (1987), Nouvelle Vague (1990) and Hélas pour moi (1994) all featured top stars, but his For Ever Mozart (1997), with its typically Godardian disquisition on art and war, was the best received of the four.

In 1998, Godard completed his long-gestating Histoire(s) du Cinéma, a highly personal meditation on 100 years of cinema. Other works of the 90s include Germany Year 90 Nine Zero and the self-portrait JLG/JLG (1995). In 2003, he made In Praise of Love, a surprisingly moving study of art, history, madness and exploitation and, in 2004, Notre Musique, shot on location in Sarajevo. Morceaux choisis (literally, choice bits), a 90-minute re-edit of his Histoire(s) du Cinéma, was shown in 2005 at the Pompidou Center in Paris and was the opening night film of the re-opened Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Among his many prizes and honors, Godard won the best director award at the Berlin Festival for Breathless, a Berlin Jury Prize for A Woman Is a Woman, and Venice's Golden Lion (Best Film) for First Name: Carmen. In 1986, he was honored with a Special French César Award for lifetime achievement.

Rialto Pictures