Jean-Luc Godard – visionary director of Breathless – dies, aged 91
Breathless, Contempt and Masculin Féminin were among his best-known films.
Jean-Luc Godard has died, aged 91.
The iconic film director was a pioneer in the Nouvelle Vague, the film movement that revolutionised cinema in the late 1950s and '60s in France.
Best known for his experimental filming style, as well as radicalism, Godard created a barrel of increasingly politicised films in the 1960s.
Godard died “peacefully at home” in Switzerland with his wife Anne-Marie Mieville at his side, according to French media.
French President Emmanuel Macron shared his condolences on Twitter, writing: “Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of the New Wave filmmakers, invented art that was resolutely modern, intensely free. We are losing a national treasure, the perspective of a genius.”
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Born in Paris in 1930, Godard grew up in Nyon in Switzerland, before moving back to Paris after his studies.
His earliest works were a series of shorts, including the 1957 Charlotte and Véronique, or All the Boys Are Named Patrick.
His first feature was Breathless which, shot on the streets of Paris in 1959, was an experimental tribute to American film noir.
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, the film raised eyebrows with its unusual visual style and editing techniques, marking Godard out as one of cinema's great innovators and winning him Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival.
Godard went on to create a host of radical and political films in the '60s, which remain some of cinema’s most important films: think Contempt, Masculin Féminin, Le Petit Soldat and Alphaville.
He enjoyed a career renaissance in the 21st century – his 2001 feature In Praise of Love was picked for the Cannes Film Festival; his 2010 film Film Socialisme won an honorary Oscar; his 2014 film Goodbye to Language bagged the Jury Prize at Cannes that year; and his Image Book was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2018.
Tributes have flooded in on social media following the sad news of Godard's passing.
Writer-director Edgar Wright wrote: "RIP Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most influential, iconoclastic film-makers of them all. It was ironic that he himself revered the Hollywood studio film-making system, as perhaps no other director inspired as many people to just pick up a camera and start shooting..."
Actor Antonio Banderas penned: "Thank you monsieur Godard for expanding the boundaries of the cinema."
