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Cover image: Le Petit Soldat

‘A story should have a beginning, a middle and

an end, but not necessarily in that order’

Jean-Luc Godard

A second telegram arrived on the morning of the planned lecture. It read:

THE WORDof Godard

C I G A R E T T E S A N D R E A L I T Y W I T H S M O K E Y O U R U N K N O W N G O D A R D

W I L L N O T C O M E T O M O R R O W M O V I E S H A V E N O T H I N G T O D O W I T H

Scheduled to give a lecture at the BFI in 1968, Jean-Luc Godard never showed up.

Instead came a telegram…

Godard’s

Anna KarinaThe 19-year-old Danish model had rejected a role in À bout de souffle because she refused to appear naked, but when Godard sent a telegram with the words ‘MADEMOISELLE, THIS TIME IT’S FOR THE PRINCIPAL ROLE’ the two were soon inseparable, and went on to marry.

Brigitte BardotThe beautiful Bardot may not so much be a muse for Godard as the embodiment of his flirtation with big-budget, star-driven filmmaking. When he cast her in Le Mépris he had to shoot a new bedroom scene for the opening after the film’s producers screamed at him for making a film starring Bardot without one nude shot!

Anne WiazemskyGodard met the 18-year-old philosophy student on the set of Robert Bresson’s Au hasard balthazar. When she introduced him to the radical students on her university campus at Nanterre his political outlook changed. She featured in many Godard films and married him in 1967.

Anne-Marie MiévilleGodard met the Swiss photographer in the early 70s. She encouraged his experimentation and nudged him towards working in video and TV. She’s been his companion and collaborator ever since.

Le Mépris

Au hasard balthazar

Raoul Coutard’s restless camera prowled the streets around the Champs Elysées and St Germain (occasionally from a wheelchair or postal cart) for 1960’s À bout de souffle – a film that became the epitome of Rive Gauche cool.

Godard literally allows the city to seep into the story in 1962’s Vivre sa vie, with certain lines lost in the din of a café or passing truck as we follow Anna Karina into the cinemas, coffee bars and neon-lit pool halls of Paris.

Secret agent Lemmy Caution travels across space (in a Ford Galaxie, no less) to the bleak futuristic city of Alphaville; a quirkily photographed 60’s Paris, where the Electricity Board building doubles as the ominous Computer Centre.

The ‘her’ in the title of 1966’s 2 or 3 Things I know About Her… refers to ‘the Paris region,’ states Godard. It’s not so much a love letter to Paris as a warning against cold consumerism as we’re shown building sites, a new motorway, an unfinished bridge, a rising towerblock, a cement truck, containers on a river…

PARISGodard’s

Alphaville

2 or 3 Things I know About Her…

On

set o

f À b

out d

e so

uffle

His daredevil

experimentation

made Godard a

cinematic pioneer

and leading light of

the nouvelle vague.

Here are some of

his most iconic

creations…

That persona Godard the auteur is rarely

seen without his trademark tortoiseshell-

rimmed shades.

WAVESMaking

(New)

Jean

-Luc

God

ard

Goo

dbye

to L

angu

age

That face The famous scene in

Vivre sa vie, where Anna Karina

watches The Passion of Joan of Arc

in a movie theatre.

That bad boy You know Jean-Paul

Belmondo (Godard’s go-to-guy for

gangster cool) means business

when his thumb touches his lip.

That dance Godard dubbed the music

to this iconic ‘Madison’ dance; the

original track was John Lee Hooker’s

‘Shake it Baby.’WAVES

FROM THE NEW WAVE

TO 3DGodard didn’t just push the boundaries of

cinema – he set up camp in the hinterland!

Here are five reasons we love him for it…

1

2

3

4

5He didn’t make TV episodes,

he made ‘movements’

He frequently narrated his

work or interviewed big-thinkers

and filmmaking peers

His film essays or ‘letters’

covered everything from

childhood to Jane Fonda

He often layered images, sounds

and text, sometimes writing on

the screen with a video pen

(long before VJing became a ‘thing’)

He was 83 when he shot his latest

critically-acclaimed feature,

in 3D (Goodbye to Language)

Goo

dbye

to L

angu

age

Letter to Jane

À bout de souffle

Bande à part

FROM JANUARY 2016 AT BFI SOUTHBANK | IN CINEMAS NATIONWIDE

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