Mike Leigh The death of Jean-Luc Godard leaves me saddened with deep nostalgic sadness, despite my reservations – shared by many – about the director’s later eccentricities. It was 1960 and Breathless burst onto the screen at the exact moment I arrived in London, a film-obsessed 17-year-old from Salford who had never seen a film that wasn’t in English, British or Hollywood. exclusive diet. Godard’s debut masterpiece truly took one’s breath away. Free-spirited location shooting, spontaneous believable performances, weird disjointed quirky moments… here was a feast of revelatory challenges to one’s ideas about cinema: pure anarchic bliss! Of course, there were many discoveries of world cinema, Truffaut among them – I probably feel closer to Les Quatre Cents Coups and Jules et Jim than anything by Godard. But it was actually Godard who dominated the continuous cinematic narrative of the decade. He released a new piece every year, and my fellow cinephiles and I lapped them all up hungrily, never failing to argue late into the night about each new offering. My favorites: Vivre Sa Vie, Les Carabiniers, Bande à Part and Two or Three Things I Know About Her. And later, a strange soft spot for the weekend.
“His films feel more essential and alive than ever”
Martin Scorsese. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images Martin Scorsese From Breathless onwards, Godard redefined the very idea of what a film is and where it can go. No one was as daring as Godard. You’d watch Vivre Sa Vie or Contempt or Made in USA and you’d get the impression that he was basically taking his own film apart and rebuilding it right before your eyes. You never knew what to expect from moment to moment, even from frame to frame – that’s how deep his involvement with cinema went. He never made an image that fit a certain rhythm or mood or point of view, and his films never took you into a dream state. They woke you up. They still do – and always will. It’s hard to think he’s gone. But if any artist can say that he left traces of his own presence in his art, it is Godard. And I have to say right now, when so many people are used to seeing themselves defined as passive consumers, his films feel more necessary and alive than ever.
“His presence made me brave”
Claire Denis. Photo: Stéphane Cardinale/Corbis/Getty Images Claire Denis For me, it had become normal to live in a world of which Godard was a part. I told friends that I couldn’t imagine a day when I was alive and he wasn’t here anymore. His presence made me brave. His films gave him faith not in cinema – because I was already a believer – but in thinking about how necessary it was to find my own path. Even with my extremely small gifts. He didn’t live in the Far West or the East, but quoted – stole, even – films, paintings, music and literature from around the world. I believe that his spirit dwelt in the middle of Europe: a continent heavy with history, to the borders of the Mediterranean, until it reached Palestine. Like Frantz Fanon with Le Petit Soldat, Godard depicted a specific face of France during the Algerian war of liberation. Today there is war in Europe, so let’s see again Je Vous Salue, Sarajevo. Kent Jones sent it to me last night. Of course.
“Cinema was his personal Rubik’s cube”
Paul Schrader. Photo: Agenzia Sintesi / Alamy Live News Paul Schrader In cinema there was before Godard and after Godard. For 15 years he disassembled cinema, reassembled it, disassembled it until it became his personal Rubik’s Cube. Godard and Dylan are the strange lodestars of their generation. Godard was a master of quotes, so he’ll appreciate what Tania, played by Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil , says about Hank Quinlan: “He was some kind of man. What does it matter what you say about people?’ Michel Piccoli and Brigitte Bardot in Contempt. Photo: Nana Productions/REX/Shutterstock
“His film about a strike in a sausage factory blew my mind”
Carol Morley. Photo: Paul Marc Mitchell Carol MorleyThe first time I saw a Godard film was during an A-level film studies evening course. I was 23 and my knowledge of cinema was minimal. Bev Zalcock our teacher showed us Tout Va Bien, which revolves around a strike in a sausage factory, and my mind was blown. What was this movie? How could it exist? When asked how it differed from other films we had seen, it was hard to find the words – we were all affected by it in ways we could not yet express – although I have a very clear memory of one student saying that a big difference for her was that the subtitles were higher on the screen than in other foreign films he had seen. But as Bev moderated the discussion it became clear that Godard, in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Gorin, was challenging the viewer in every frame: this was political, radical, revolutionary cinema. And it starred Jane Fonda – someone we’d all heard of! Later, when I became a director, I made a short called I’m Not Here, in which I have a sequence inspired by Tout Va Bien: a long and repetitive tracking shot in a supermarket. Upon hearing of Godard’s death, I reached for a book on my shelf, Godard to Godard, and opened it to something I had read years ago: “I make my films not only when I shoot, but as I dream, eat, read. , to talk to you.” It helped me understand that making movies would occupy every breath of my life, and also taught me how important it is to untangle the so-called rules of cinema and always remember to play and invent and not you never stop learning.
“The crowd was raging and screaming”
Luca Guadagnino. Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images Luca Guadagnino The wonderful power of the name Jean-Luc Godard, or should I say of the ever-legendary acronym JLG, came to my consciousness when I was 14 years old. It was 1985 and in the dark and oppressed Palermo of my teenage years I came across a frenzied group of people screaming in front of a theater where Marie was playing. How, I wondered, could a film create such a violent reaction? Then I saw the film and through its bright austere beauty I fully learned the power of ideas. Godard was a shining light that showed us the way, film after film, idea after idea, language. We are lonelier today and yet his amazing cinema will forever be our guide. Goddard with Frankie Dymon on the set of Sympathy for the Devil, 1967. Photo: Keystone Features/Getty Images
“The Wicked Cardinal Who Shattered Complacency Like a Hammer to Glass”
Mark Cousins. Photo: REX/Shutterstock Mark Cousins He was the bad cardinal. The herald of fire and brimstone. I saw it first on the weekend and felt assaulted, exalted. He forced us to the moral high ground, he despised entertainment and lyricism. But then I saw Vivre Sa Vie, which filled me with emotion, and two or three things I know about her. His female-centric films were better, more indulgent to me. The eroticism of Hail Mary was contradictory. For him, the cinema was never just a place of enjoyment. The layering of his voice, text and visual editing was often too much for my brain. He and Anne-Marie Miéville surpassed most other filmmakers. They pinned them on the movie marathon. His legacy? It shattered complacent cinema like a hammer through glass. I recently went to Rolle in Switzerland in case I bump into him or see him walking his dog. I brought my camera, but how would you shoot it?
“There is a deep well from which we must continue to drink”
Kelly Reichardt. Photo: Stéphane Mahé/Reuters Kelly Reichardt I know what Dave Hickey means when he says what the world was like before Andy Warhol and the way he cared. Isn’t the same with Godard? There is the way the movies look in front of him and the way they care. He was so prolific and lived such a long life. There is a deep well from which we must continue to drink.
“He reborn Tarantino and Soderbergh – but his later films are a chore”
Kevin MacdonaldGodard changed cinema. He made it self-aware like no one before – you always knew you were watching a film when you saw his films, like a Brecht for films. You always know the process and foundations of his films – and their influences (usually American gangster films early on; Vertov and Russian “constructivists” later). Breathless, A Band Apart, Un Femme et un Femme: all brilliant, cool, iconoclastic films that were really about filmmaking. He doesn’t really care about the story or the people. Interested in influences and ideas. He began as a critic and remained a critic throughout his life. Kevin McDonald. Photo: Pedro Alvarez/The Observer But it is not too much to say that Godard gave birth to Richard Lester, Tarantino, Soderbergh, Celine Shiama – in other words almost all of modern cinema. Those early films still have a boldness that takes my breath away. But the later films I’ve seen are mostly a chore: highly political, highly confrontational – even sometimes typically inventive. He loved “épater la bourgeoisie”. That means I must be a bourgeois, because these movies really “cheated” me. But I loved the Rolling Stones documentary One Plus One, which tackled the emptiness of the band rehearsing with scenes of radical street politics. It says more about rock music and its role in society than any other film of the era – perhaps with the exception of Gimme Shelter. On the set of One Plus One, 1960. Photo: Hulton Deutsch/Corbis/Getty Images I once worked with Caroline Champetier, a director of photography who was a Godard regular in the 80s and 90s. I hung on every word I could get out of her about ‘sir’. I was impressed by her stories of filming in Russia a conceptual version of Anna Karenina, shot among the crumbling…
