Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema’s Afterlife

by Grant Douglas Bromley · September 14, 2022

Jean-Luc Godard on the set of Weekend (1967)

“I make my films not only when I’m shooting, but as I dream, eat, read, talk to you.”
– Jean-Luc Godard

In 1967, Jean-Luc Godard declared the end of cinema (“fin de cinema”) in the intertitles at the conclusion of his film Weekend (1967), and his own work reflected this death. From the self-imposed ashes arose an artist searching for purpose and meaning through sound and images in life, our world’s power structures, and cinema itself.

On September 13, 2022, Swiss-French filmmaker Godard passed away at the age of 91. Survived by his partner, filmmaker Anne-Marie Miéville, Godard leaves behind a legacy of innovation in the seventh art and a body of work ranging from the pop sensibilities of Breathless (1960) and Masculin féminin (1966) to the probing essay films Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998) and The Image Book (2018).

Never stagnant, Godard’s style constantly evolved and went in directions that defied dramatic conventions — satisfying an audience was rarely, if ever, his intent. While his filmmaking career went through periods marked by particular approaches and themes, he never abandoned his roots in film criticism, saying in a 1996 interview with Film Comment‘s Gavin Smith, “I don’t make a distinction between directing and criticism.”

Starting out as a film critic, Godard was one of several young cinephiles (with François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer, and others) who wrote for Cahiers du cinéma — the magazine which established the “auteur theory,” defining a film as the creation of its director with attributes and tendencies that can be traced throughout an entire filmography. Hollywood genre filmmakers like Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks were championed by Cahiers, and their work became an important jumping-off point for the filmmaking practice of Godard and his peers.

His first short film, Une femme coquette (1955), would be followed by a few more short-form dramatic experiments before he received funding to produce his feature debut, Breathless. With Breathless, the notion of a French New Wave was validated, with Truffaut’s earlier The 400 Blows (1959) having been a global sensation and Rivette’s debut Paris Belongs To Us (1961) in the wings.

Such work invigorated filmmakers all over the globe and codified a more mainstream appreciation of cinéma vérité and low budget aesthetics. How many filmmakers have been inspired by the photo of Godard pushing cinematographer Raoul Coutard in a wheelchair in lieu of a camera dolly?

Jean-Luc Godard pushes cinematographer Raoul Coutard in a makeshift wheelchair dolly on the set of Breathless (1960).

More expressive about his place in film history than his peers, Godard’s work referenced other films and works of art, placing himself and cinema in the lineage of art history. Like Alfred Hitchcock, a personality known within and outside of the cinema, Godard shaped himself to have a presence synonymous with film. He included his own film, Vivre sa vie (1962), at #6 in his top 10 list for Cahier‘s best films of 1962; “cinema” is credited as Godard’s middle name (“Jean-Luc Cinéma Godard”) in the opening titles of Band of Outsiders (1964), and in the trailer he edited for Masculin féminin his name briefly appears as “Jean-Luc God” — a blasphemous stunt he would repeat again in the advertising for Hélas pour moi (1993) nearly three decades later. Such provocations are commonplace in Godard’s work, and his youthful ego attracted the ire of many while still amassing imitators and disciples in film studies, criticism, and filmmaking.

At the Cannes Film Festival in May of 1968, Godard was among the filmmakers who called for the festival to shut down in solidarity with the far-left youth movement in France. “We’re talking solidarity with students and workers, and you’re talking dolly shots and close-ups,” Godard told festival attendees, adding, “You’re assholes!” However, his own work in the decade after May ’68 would largely be comprised of dolly shots and close-ups to examine political subjects with cinematic technique foregrounded. Film form, or how something is represented, became the big question of his work.

A never-completed film entitled Palestine Will Win, produced by Jean-Pierre Gorin and Godard’s Dziga Vertov Group, is such a work that allowed for Godard to become more introspective as financing for his political work became difficult. When the entire cast of Palestine Will Win was killed by Israeli forces, Godard and Miéville took some of the surviving footage and created Ici et ailleurs (1976), a small yet seminal work in his filmography which paved the way for a new period of work that would materialize nearly a decade later.

“I never went away,” Godard said in a 1980 interview with Dick Cavett in response to his film Every Man For Himself (1980) being described as a “comeback.” This sentiment remains true of much of the public’s awareness and understanding of his recent work, often released theatrically in major cities alone, though access to his work from 1980 to the present has widened considerably with home media.

Filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Ōshima, Michael Haneke, Quentin Tarantino, and many more have noted Godard’s influence on their work and on cinema as a whole. His experimentation with film language has contributed to the way contemporary films are written, shot, edited, and mixed to this day. Sounds and images as a means of communication are at the heart of his work, and finding new paths to convey meaning as cinematic technology advanced is traceable through his oeuvre.

One of the last living filmmakers from the New Wave generation, Godard’s passing marks the closing off of a gateway to cinema’s past and a champion of cinema’s still yet-to-be-realized potential. Godard gave us glimpses into what could be, and his life’s work was the furtherance of a burgeoning medium many still take for granted. The cinema will move on without Godard, but that it can move on at all is thanks to him.

Jean-Luc Godard took this photo to announce his film The Image Book (2018).

Highly prolific, Godard’s filmography can appear daunting, but here are a few works from each of his major periods that may open the door for further exploration and interest in his work and cinema as a whole: