How Jean-Luc Godard became Quentin Tarantino’s ultimate hero
Since the beginning of his career, Quentin Tarantino has been more than transparent about the sources of inspiration he frequently draws upon. Be it the masterpieces of French New Wave auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard or campy grindhouse classics that toy with vulgar themes, the Pulp Fiction director has frequently utilised key elements from these vastly different aesthetic frameworks while building his own cinematic visions.
Instead of going to film school, Tarantino made the most of the exposure he received while working at a video store, where he got the opportunity to see brilliant gems from all corners of the world. One particular filmmaker who completely revolutionised his ideas about filmmaking was none other than Godard. On multiple occasions, the American auteur has spoken at length about how much he learnt from Godard’s disregard for previously accepted conventions.
“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,” he once said in an interview, referring to the groundbreaking impact of Breathless and its radically different visual language. From Godard’s playful interpretation of genre frameworks to his breezy style, Tarantino absorbed it all at the start of his directorial journey when he was still finding his style.
He compared Godard to Bob Dylan, claiming that cinema would not have been the same without his invaluable contributions: “That’s one aspect of Godard that I found very liberating — movies commenting on themselves, movies and movie history… To me, Godard did to movies what Bob Dylan did to music: they both revolutionised their forms.” In order to properly acknowledge the French pioneer’s impact on his work, he named his production company after the film Bande à part and even asked Uma Thurman to refer to it while preparing for the dance sequence in Pulp Fiction.
Unfortunately, Godard didn’t have the same opinions about Tarantino’s body of work and even attacked him for naming his company after Bande à part. When asked in an interview about what he thought of the American director’s approach to cinema, Godard declared: “I think his work is null. He chose the title of one of my worst films to name his production company. That doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Maybe Tarantino’s admiration for Godard wavered after these scathing comments since he later claimed that he soon outgrew the Pierrot le Fou director’s seminal experiments. In a separate interview, he admitted that he was “not really a big fan of Jean-Luc Godard anymore. I think Godard is kind of like Frank Frazetta… You get into him for a while, and he’s like your hero for a little bit. You start drawing shit like him, and then you outgrow. I think that’s what Godard is, at least for me anyway, as a filmmaker.”
Watch Tarantino talk about Godard below.
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