On September 13, 2022, in Rolle, Switzerland, the world of cinema lost one of its greatest iconoclasts: Jean-Luc Godard. Director, screenwriter, critic, editor, occasional actor, thinker, and theorist of the seventh art, Godard was not just a filmmaker: he was a seismic force. His work, as vast as it is elusive, forever changed the grammar of cinema. This tribute retraces the journey of a radical, audacious, often misunderstood creator, but one who was always ahead of his time.
A youth caught between two worlds
Born in Paris on December 3, 1930, into a wealthy and cultured Franco-Swiss family, Jean-Luc Godard spent his childhood between France and Switzerland, immersed in Protestant biblical verses and the works of Paul Valéry. Although he failed his first attempts at the baccalaureate, he finally passed in 1949 in Lausanne. That same summer, he wrote his first screenplay and discovered a place that would obsess him for the rest of his life: the Cinémathèque Française. It was there that he met other passionate young filmmakers: Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer, Chabrol… They would all soon come together around Cahiers du Cinéma, for which they would become some of the most incisive writers. Under the pseudonym "Hans Lucas," Godard began writing critical texts as early as 1950, already revealing a provocative and independent spirit.
Out of breath, a clap of thunder
In 1960, Jean-Luc Godard made a major impact with Breathless, based on a screenplay by Truffaut. Shot on a shoestring budget, with a handheld camera, natural light, improvised dialogue, and groundbreaking editing (notably the famous jump cuts), the film became the manifesto of the French New Wave. Cinema was no longer filmed theater: it was a language in itself, waiting to be invented.
With this first feature film, Godard established his style: literary quotations, mise en abyme, alienation, an omniscient camera, and a rejection of linear narrative. Jean-Paul Belmondo, the unforgettable face of Michel Poiccard, entered into legend. Cinema itself had just entered a new era.
The Karina era: modernity and melancholy
In the 60s, Godard filmed at a frenetic pace: Vivre sa vie, Le Mépris, Bande à part, Pierrot le Fou, Alphaville… So many films that questioned love, politics, language, the media, consumer society.
Anna Karina, his muse and partner, is in almost every shot. Their collaboration gives birth to masterpieces of great visual and emotional modernity. In Pierrot le Fou, a poetic and anarchic road movie, Godard superimposes fragments of texts, paintings, slogans, and songs—a collage aesthetic that would become his signature.
A cinema of rupture
From the late 60s onward, Godard broke with the system. May '68 spurred him to radicalize his art: no more glamorous actresses, no more traditional distribution channels. He founded the Dziga Vertov Group with Jean-Pierre Gorin, inspired by Soviet cinema of the 20s, and made political, activist, often experimental, and sometimes virtually unknown films. The message took precedence over the form.
In the 70s, he turned to video, installations, and audiovisual experiments. He explored, deconstructed, and shattered images, dismantling sound. He no longer narrated, he exhibited. He didn't film a story, he filmed an idea.
The return to cinema
In the 80s, Godard returned to the screen with more accessible films, without compromising his exacting standards. Every Man for Himself, First Name: Carmen (Golden Lion at Venice), and Detective (with Johnny Hallyday) reconnected with narrative while remaining profoundly Godardian.
The 90s marked another stage with the ambitious project Histoire(s) du cinéma, a filmed essay in eight episodes, where the filmmaker engages in dialogue with the ghosts of the 7th art: Hitchcock, Eisenstein, Rossellini, but also the Holocaust, war, painting, and philosophy. Editing becomes thought. The image becomes memory.
Final bursts
To the very end, Godard innovated. In 2014, at 83, he surprised everyone at Cannes with Goodbye to Language, a 3D film that won the Jury Prize. Four years later, The Image Book, a kaleidoscope of images and sounds, earned him a special Palme d'Or, a rare distinction that celebrates his entire body of work.
At over 90 years old, frail but lucid, he chose assisted suicide in Switzerland. He died on September 13, 2022. A departure as free as his filmography.
Jean-Luc Godard leaves behind more than 120 films, both short and feature-length, hundreds of reviews, and an inexhaustible body of work on cinema, politics, language, and image. He has inspired generations of filmmakers: Scorsese, Tarantino, Kiarostami, Varda, Assayas, Dolan…
