JEAN-LUC GODARD The Intellectual Cineaste

Five Essential films Breathless Alphaville Contempt Weekend JLG / JLG

Five Rarely Seen Le Petit Soldad Pierrot Le Fou Comment ca Va? Nouve Vague Germany 90 Nine Zero

"The Cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives and takes away from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't."

Godard was one of the first major filmmakers to make films that comment on the nature of the medium as well as comment on politics, society and the kitchy façade of a world dominated by advertising and Hollywood -- or what some might call the prostitution of our mind and soul for quick cash. His early films are a self-conscious mix of old Hollywood, Paris existentialism and neo-Marxist values and are full of ineffectual intellectuals who talk about the ennui of their existence while they run for their lives after having committed a crime. They don't seem to have any kind of control over their fate and their deaths happen quickly with nonchalance.. As his career continued he made films that were harder and harder to understand and more political in nature. He was one of the few major filmmakers who really broke out of commerical cinema into what can only be called personal cinema. And because of this he fell out of favor with the crowd who lined up for Truffaut and Wenders. But it doesn't take a genius to realise that Godard couldn't care less if he has big box office. Although Godard builds believable and complex characters he skips over the mawkish details that sink lesser films. He is more interested in the larger idea (or the theme, if you will) than in a story. Godard's films roughly (with some cross over) fall into 4 catagories: 1) The Nouve Vague with political overtones 1959 - 1968 [Breathless through One Plus One] 2) Marx Politics and dialectics 1969 - 1980 [Wind From the East through Comment Ca Va?] 3) Re-emergance as 'commerical' maverick 1981 - 1990 [Every Man for Himself through Nouve Vague] 4) Personal Montage essay films 1992 - 2001 [Germany Year 90 Nine-Zero through Histoire du Cinema]

Click here for Godard Poetry

A bigger essay on the way...