The death of Jean-Luc Godard at the age of 91 marks the end of an era, not only of a certain modernist tradition of auteur cinema, but also of cinema as a primary vehicle for existential and historical truth. Marguerite Duras considered him the greatest catalyst in cinema, and no other film-maker grasped better, or exploited more, the potential of sound and image. His prodigious oeuvre and the staggering range of forms and formats in which he worked have redefined our understanding of cinema as an art form and cultural practice, transforming the way we look at ourselves and the world.
Godard came to prominence in the early 1960s as part of the French New Wave, the most important national film movement of the 20th century. These film-makers – many of them critics for the journal Cahiers du Cinéma – believed passionately that a film’s visual style is an authorial signature reflecting the director’s personal, creative vision. Inspired by American directors such as Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray and Orson Welles, the Italian neorealist Roberto Rossellini and French film-poets such as Jean Vigo, Jean Cocteau and Jean Renoir, they attacked the studio-bound French “cinéma de qualité”, which they believed had become stagnant, relied on uninspired scriptwriters and established stars, and stifled personal creativity.
