15 October 2008

Director Spotlight: Jean-Luc Godard


Oui, you guessed it: It's time to dissect the work of France's most well-known modern film director, and father of the Nouvelle Vague. Drumroll, s'il vous plait! It's Jean-Luc Godard!

He started as deftly employing Jean-Paul Belmondo as his affable, louche criminal in Breathless. The film is often noted as the first foray into the French New Wave of filmmaking --second maybe to to Truffaut's 400 Blows. [I won't go into what the French New Wave is in this post (view upcoming post devoted to it), but just know that it deals with 'jump cuts' and less conventional narratives, among other things like voiceovers and subversive topics --two of JLG's trademarks.] He also employed his then-wife, Swedish actress Anna Karina, as the femme protagonist in the majority of his 1960s films.

Godard's trademarks are his ridiculous non-narrative structure, forays into surrealism & use of philosophical tropes. When I watch I get the feeling I'm just listening to him recite Heidegger, Kant, Marx or Sartre, while Anna Karina bats her eyes in technicolor. It's unnerving sometimes, and that's why he is a true auteur in the filmmaking world: he doesn't bend to popular, conventional film themes or demands. Uniquely French, frankly unique. Amazing.

Breathless is a story about a petty thief, Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who tries to convince Patricia (Jean Seberg) to flee to Italy with him. She is an American student working for the New York Herald Tribune, and he steals cars & cash under an alias, Laszlo Kovacs. An unlikely pairing, but they prove to be a delight onscreen. He tough but sweet, she sweet but tough. Parfait!

Some of my other favorites:

A Woman is A Woman (1961)- Karina & Belmondo in musical-cum-love triangle narrative

Contempt (1963)- Brigitte Bardot & Michel Piccoli in the antithesis of romance in Italy

Band of Outsiders (1964)-Karina, Claude Brasseur & Sami Frey in a French take on American gangster movies

Alphaville (1965)- Karina & Eddie Constantine in a twisted, fascist-Sci-Fi -film noir

Pierrot Le Fou (1965)- Karina & Belmondo in a Bonnie & Clyde remake of odd proportions

Masculin Feminin (1966)- Jean-Pierre Léaud & Chantal Goya in "The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola."


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