Jean-Luc

Meet the godfather of filmmakers: Jean-Luc Godard, director of Breathless and many other motion pictures. Godard was one of the central figures of the New Wave of French filmmaking in the 1960s. He has had an unimaginable effect on modern cinema that refuses to fade away. Like his contemporaries François Truffaut and Eric Rohmer, Godard reworked the conventions of Hollywood movies and brought new energy and irreverence to film. His romance-crime movie Breathless (1959) is one of the most influential movies of its era.

Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris, France, on December 3, 1930. His wealthy French-Swiss parents, Paul and Odile (née Monod) Godard, raised Jean-Luc and his three siblings primarily in Switzerland. After World War II, Godard attended the Lycée Buffon in Paris. He moved back and forth between France and Switzerland for several years before settling in Paris in 1949, when he enrolled at the Sorbonne, University of Paris to study anthropology.
Instead of finishing his studies though, he quickly became immersed in the film culture of Paris' Latin Quarter. He would spend the majority of his time attending film screenings with friends François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer. Later on, these people would also turn out to be important directors. Godard and his friends began publishing film criticism in journals such as La Gazette du Cinema and Cahiers du Cinema during the early 1950's. Through these humble beginnings, this group of writers and directors would eventually be known as the New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) of the French film industry.

His approach to filmmaking reflects his interest in how cinematic form intertwines with social reality. His groundbreaking debut feature, Breathless—his first and last mainstream success—is, of course, essential Godard: its strategy of merging high (Mozart) and low (American crime thrillers) culture has been mimicked by generations of filmmakers. As the sixties progressed, Godard's output became increasingly radical, both aesthetically such as A Woman Is a Woman, Contempt, Band of Outsiders, and politically, such as Masculin féminin, Pierrot le fou. By 1968, he had decided to forsworn commercial cinema altogether and formed a leftist filmmaking collective called the Dziga Vertov Group, through which they made such films as Tout va bien.

Many of Godard's movies of the 1970s and 1980s were too ideological or too incomprehensible for audiences (or even critics) to embrace. However, he made a brief commercial comeback in the 1980s with a trilogy of films about feminine sexuality: Passion, First Name: Carmen and the controversial Hail Mary. In the 1990s he worked on Histoire(s) du Cinéma, a 10-part video study of French cinema.

In 2010, Godard was given an honorary Academy award, the Governor's Award, by the Hollywood establishment, but for some reason, Godard did not attend the ceremony. His 2014 film, Goodbye to Language was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize.

Godard has been married twice in his life; first to his leading lady Anna Karina from 1961 to 1967, and then to the actress and writer Anne Wiasemsky from 1967 to 1979. He and his partner, the filmmaker Anne-Marie Miéville, have lived together in Rolle, Switzerland since 1977.

Godard is held in high regards by almost each and every filmmaker, and even at his old age of 83, he is still showing the world, through his movie “Goodbye to Language”, that he isn't quite done dazzling the world just yet.