Jean-Luc Godard death: Tributes pour in for legendary French director
Tributes are pouring in from across the world of film following Jean-Luc Godard’s death, aged 91.
French newspaper Liberation confirmed the death of the New Wave pioneer and cited people close to him. Godard first established himself in the late 1950s as part of the Nouvelle Vague movement, which helped revolutionise cinema.
Starting out as a film critic, Godard ushered in a new age of filmmaking along with his French New Wave contemporaries, who refused to believe that a director was any less authoritative than a writer by moulding the cinematic medium according to their distinct styles. His most famous works are 1960s Breathless, 1963’s Contempt and 1965’s Pierrot La Fou. Godard remained an active filmmaker until the end, with his last film, Le Livre d’image, being released in 2018.
Godard influenced a whole generation of directors, including Quentin Tarantino, who once said: “Godard was so influential to me at the beginning of my aesthetic as a director… It’s kind of like a lack of any type of film style, just wanting to make movies for the love of it. Godard is one who taught me the fun and the freedom and the joy of breaking rules…and just fucking around with the entire medium but I consider Godard to be to cinema what Bob Dylan was to music.”
He broke the rules of filmmaking with his trademark irreverence, which, paradoxically, became the primary rule for most New Wave surges in global cinema. His oeuvre can be broken down into various periods, all of which espoused vastly differing artistic sensibilities, but they all had his revolutionary spirit in common. Through his films, Godard created a fantastic blend between the political and the human, which few filmmakers had done before him and fewer have managed to do since.
Tributes have poured in from the world of film, including writer Dave Calhoun who posted on Twitter: “Jean-Luc Godard. Shaking things up for seven decades pretty much. Genius. Troublemaker. Often baffling. Always demanded you stop and take notice.”
Meanwhile, musician Anton Newcombe simply wrote ‘R.I.P. Jean-Luc Godard’ and linked to his band Brian Jonestown Massacre’s 2015 album, Musique de Film Imaginé, which was inspired by the filmmaker. Warren Ellis has also paid tribute by writing, “Devenir immortel et puis mourir. A bout de Souffle,” which translates to, “Become immortal and then die. Breathless”.
Blondie guitarist Chris Stein recalled: “We briefly met Goddard around 1980 when we had the notion to remake Alphaville. He said “why make this old movie?” It never happened but we ‘bought’ the rights from him for a grand. We later found out he didn’t own the rights.”‘
Stephen Fry paid his respects to the late director and posted: “Adieu, Jean-Luc Godard. I watched Breathless for the umpteenth time again just two weeks ago. It still leaps off the screen like few movies. That scene between them in the hotel: how many other directors could have managed that in so small a space and made it so captivating?”
Last Night In Soho and Babydriver director Edgar Wright also posted a gallery of images of Godard on Twitter along with the caption: “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…”
See the tributes to Godard below.
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