Jean-Luc Godard

12 films · 1960 to 1990 · 9 on TSPDT
Born 3 December 1930, Paris, France · Died 13 September 2022

Jean-Luc Godard (UK: GOD-ar, US: goh-DAR; French: [ʒɑ̃ lyk ɡɔdaʁ]; 3 December 1930 – 13 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era.

Jean-Luc Godard

Defining films

In their own words

Godard, with Breathless, was absorbing everything from American B-movies, especially the energy of Samuel Fuller and the pacing of films noirs, but he was also taking the spontaneity and street realism of Italian Neorealism, particularly Rossellini. He was synthesizing it all into something completely new.

With Breathless, Godard was absorbing everything from American B-movies, especially the energy of Samuel Fuller and the pacing of films noirs, but he was also taking the spontaneity and street realism of Italian Neorealism, particularly Rossellini. He was synthesizing it all into something completely new.

On A bout de souffle · IndieWire, "Martin Scorsese on Film History and the Future of Cinema" by David Ehrlich

He took the genre of American B-pictures, the gangster film, the film noir, and he infused it with a European sensibility, a political and existential angst, and the raw, documentary feel of Italian neorealism.

On A bout de souffle · Tribeca Film Festival Q&A, "A Conversation with Francis Ford Coppola"

Films by decade

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