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TRANSCRIPT
Cover image: Le Petit Soldat
‘A story should have a beginning, a middle and
an end, but not necessarily in that order’
Jean-Luc Godard
A second telegram arrived on the morning of the planned lecture. It read:
THE WORDof Godard
C I G A R E T T E S A N D R E A L I T Y W I T H S M O K E Y O U R U N K N O W N G O D A R D
W I L L N O T C O M E T O M O R R O W M O V I E S H A V E N O T H I N G T O D O W I T H
Scheduled to give a lecture at the BFI in 1968, Jean-Luc Godard never showed up.
Instead came a telegram…
Godard’s
Anna KarinaThe 19-year-old Danish model had rejected a role in À bout de souffle because she refused to appear naked, but when Godard sent a telegram with the words ‘MADEMOISELLE, THIS TIME IT’S FOR THE PRINCIPAL ROLE’ the two were soon inseparable, and went on to marry.
Brigitte BardotThe beautiful Bardot may not so much be a muse for Godard as the embodiment of his flirtation with big-budget, star-driven filmmaking. When he cast her in Le Mépris he had to shoot a new bedroom scene for the opening after the film’s producers screamed at him for making a film starring Bardot without one nude shot!
Anne WiazemskyGodard met the 18-year-old philosophy student on the set of Robert Bresson’s Au hasard balthazar. When she introduced him to the radical students on her university campus at Nanterre his political outlook changed. She featured in many Godard films and married him in 1967.
Anne-Marie MiévilleGodard met the Swiss photographer in the early 70s. She encouraged his experimentation and nudged him towards working in video and TV. She’s been his companion and collaborator ever since.
Le Mépris
Au hasard balthazar
Raoul Coutard’s restless camera prowled the streets around the Champs Elysées and St Germain (occasionally from a wheelchair or postal cart) for 1960’s À bout de souffle – a film that became the epitome of Rive Gauche cool.
Godard literally allows the city to seep into the story in 1962’s Vivre sa vie, with certain lines lost in the din of a café or passing truck as we follow Anna Karina into the cinemas, coffee bars and neon-lit pool halls of Paris.
Secret agent Lemmy Caution travels across space (in a Ford Galaxie, no less) to the bleak futuristic city of Alphaville; a quirkily photographed 60’s Paris, where the Electricity Board building doubles as the ominous Computer Centre.
The ‘her’ in the title of 1966’s 2 or 3 Things I know About Her… refers to ‘the Paris region,’ states Godard. It’s not so much a love letter to Paris as a warning against cold consumerism as we’re shown building sites, a new motorway, an unfinished bridge, a rising towerblock, a cement truck, containers on a river…
PARISGodard’s
Alphaville
2 or 3 Things I know About Her…
On
set o
f À b
out d
e so
uffle
His daredevil
experimentation
made Godard a
cinematic pioneer
and leading light of
the nouvelle vague.
Here are some of
his most iconic
creations…
That persona Godard the auteur is rarely
seen without his trademark tortoiseshell-
rimmed shades.
WAVESMaking
(New)
Jean
-Luc
God
ard
Goo
dbye
to L
angu
age
That face The famous scene in
Vivre sa vie, where Anna Karina
watches The Passion of Joan of Arc
in a movie theatre.
That bad boy You know Jean-Paul
Belmondo (Godard’s go-to-guy for
gangster cool) means business
when his thumb touches his lip.
That dance Godard dubbed the music
to this iconic ‘Madison’ dance; the
original track was John Lee Hooker’s
‘Shake it Baby.’WAVES
FROM THE NEW WAVE
TO 3DGodard didn’t just push the boundaries of
cinema – he set up camp in the hinterland!
Here are five reasons we love him for it…
1
2
3
4
5He didn’t make TV episodes,
he made ‘movements’
He frequently narrated his
work or interviewed big-thinkers
and filmmaking peers
His film essays or ‘letters’
covered everything from
childhood to Jane Fonda
He often layered images, sounds
and text, sometimes writing on
the screen with a video pen
(long before VJing became a ‘thing’)
He was 83 when he shot his latest
critically-acclaimed feature,
in 3D (Goodbye to Language)
Goo
dbye
to L
angu
age
Letter to Jane
À bout de souffle
Bande à part