Actor, comedian, director and writer Stephen Fry said he had watched Godard’s debut film ‘Breathless’ for the “umpteenth time again” two weeks ago and found it as compelling as ever…reports Asian Lite News
Franco-Swiss director and New Wave standard-bearer Jean-Luc Godard, who revolutionised world cinema with his ground-breaking debut, ‘Breathless’, and never stopped pushing the envelope of his creativity, has died at 91, reports Variety.
The news was first reported in the French newspaper Liberation.
Although there hadn’t been an official confirmation till midday in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Godard on social media with a message describing the auteur as “the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers, who had invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art.” He added: “We are losing a national treasure, a look of genius.”
The prolific icon was not known to rest. Godard presented his last film ‘The Image Book’, a kaleidoscopic bulletin spanning 200 years of history, in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018 and was celebrated with the Special Palme d’Or. Godard was also planning to adapt ‘The Image Book’ into an exhibit in Paris, Madrid, New York and Singapore before the pandemic hit, notes ‘Variety’.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences awarded Godard an Honorary Oscar at a 2010 event. Godard didn’t come to accept; it would have been surprising if he had (he was always the maverick outsider and Oscar is the ultimate symbol of the film establishment).
But at the event, several Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) governors spoke of the New Wave icon’s influence, with scribe Phil Alden Robinson saying, “He didn’t just break the rules, he ran them over with a stolen car,” adding that, for good measure, Godard backed up the stolen car to make sure the rules were dead.
Others, according to Variety, pointed out that his use of long takes, jump-cuts and actors’ asides to the camera all changed the filmmaking vocabulary. He once famously stated that every film needs a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.
Immediately after news of French New Wave icon Jean-Luc Godard’s death broke on Tuesday (September 13), tributes started pouring in from world leaders, fellow filmmakers, artistes and cinephiles around the world, reports ‘Variety’.
The first off the block was French President Emmanuel Macron, who described Godard as “the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers, who had invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art. We are losing a national treasure, a look of genius.”
Godard was also celebrated by Edgar Wright, the writer-director of ‘Last Night in Soho’, who wrote on social media that Godard was “one of the most influential, iconoclastic filmmakers of them all.” Wright added that “perhaps no other director inspired as many people to just pick up a camera and start shooting”.
Actor, comedian, director and writer Stephen Fry said he had watched Godard’s debut film ‘Breathless’ for the “umpteenth time again” two weeks ago and found it as compelling as ever.
“It still leaps off the screen like few movies,” Fry tweeted. “That scene between them in the hotel: how many other directors could have managed that in so small a space and made it so captivating?”
Oscar-winning Mexican director and author Guillermo Del Toro also paid homage to Godard on social media and kept retweeting tributes from others, one of them being from the French cinephile Philippe Rouyer, who wrote: “A last salute to #JeanLucGodard immense filmmaker who has not stopped rethinking his art since ‘Breathless’ (1960). ‘Le Contempt’ and ‘Pierrot le fou’ are masterpieces. But until his last strokes of brilliance, all his films question the making and the impact of images.”
The British Film Institute (BFI) called Godard a “giant of cinema who ripped up the rule book.” A statement issued by it read: “From ‘Breathless’ onwards, he tested the limits of the medium.”
BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts said in a statement issued to ‘Variety’: “Jean-Luc Godard’s death is a huge loss to cinema. The godfather of the French New Wave and one of the most influential and innovative filmmakers of the last century, his work has resonated with generations of film lovers around the world.”
The Cannes Film Festival released a retrospective of his career highlights on Twitter. “Since his first appearance at the Festival in ‘Cleo de 5 a 7’ in 1962, 21 films by Jean-Luc Godard have been screened at Cannes,” the festival shared.
Cameron Bailey, chief of the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival, tweeted: “Jean-Luc Godard might have despised posthumous praise but here we are. His staggering body of work over seven decades showed him to be a rare, true genius in cinema. It was playful and punishing. It challenged every viewer, and rewarded the persistent.”
He added: “Most of all, Godard was merciless in his pursuit of what (and how) images mean. For his every confrontation that expanded our art form, we will be forever in his debt.”
The news of Godard’s passing was first reported in the French newspaper ‘Liberation’ on Tuesday morning and later confirmed by the auteur’s family in a statement which read: “There will not be any official ceremony. Jean-Luc Godard died peacefully in his home surrounded by his close ones. He will be incinerated.”
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