Martin Scorsese

As you’d expect from someone who eats, sleeps, lives, and breathes cinema, Martin Scorsese is a fan of Godard’s and has been for decades. Unfortunately, the best he could offer in return was a compliment so backhanded that it scanned as an insult, which it probably was.

On one hand, he praised Raging Bull as “very beautiful” and had a soft spot for New York, New York, which is surprising when it’s usually dismissed as one of Scorsese’s weaker efforts, but Godard was entitled to like what he liked. On the other hand, he also called him “a pretty middling filmmaker who passes for a great mind,” capping off his derisive assessment with a cheeky, “Good for him.”

David Lynch

The late, great, and legendary David Lynch called Godard one of his ultimate filmmaking heroes, alongside Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, so it would have been a kick in the teeth had the idiosyncratic maverick caught wind of the fact that his idol didn’t really rate him at all.

“I really don’t like his style at all,” he admitted. “Lynch’s dreams only speak of him. In my opinion, in his films, there are beautiful images, from a photographic point of view, and yet the image has disappeared.” He did at least acknowledge that the Blue Velvet architect’s movies were nice to look at, but he thought they were sorely lacking anything between the cinematic ears.

Joel and Ethan Coen

While some directors would be left devastated to discover that one of the best to ever do it hated their filmography with an intense and burning passion, the Coen brothers sounded pretty thrilled when word reached their ears that Godard thought they were a couple of hacks.

“We just found out that Jean-Luc Godard really hates our movies!” Ethan excitedly told The Times in 2009. Not only that, but they wished he wasn’t the only one. “Too bad Luis Buñuel didn’t live longer. It would be interesting to hear that Buñuel hates our movies too. Or what about Pasolini?” Clearly, they couldn’t have cared less.

Steven Spielberg

Directors literally don’t come more successful than Steven Spielberg, the highest-grossing of all time. And yet, despite his raft of classics and undeniable box office prowess, Godard thought he was a complete and utter hack.

Schindler’s List, which many people would call Spielberg’s magnum opus, was the straw that broke the ‘French New Wave’ figurehead’s back. He blasted it as “phoney,” said the filmmaker was “not very intelligent,” and made the unusual analogy of claiming it would take him two minutes to run 100 yards when the “genius” William Wyler could do it in 12 seconds.

Quentin Tarantino

The relationship between Quentin Tarantino and Godard is a strange one, with the Pulp Fiction writer and director previously a huge fan of the latter’s work, to the extent that he named his production company after Bande à part.

Things changed, though, with Tarantino eventually deciding to tell the world that he wasn’t a fan anymore. Not that Godard gave a shit, when he’d already severed their bond by trashing Pulp Fiction and waving off the merits of his entire filmography by proclaiming that “his work is null.”