Remembering Godard ; The Auteur of Political Films

"What is your greatest ambition in life?

To become immortal... and then die." - Breathless, 1960

French Filmmaker Jean Luc Godard embraced death last week in his own way making true the character's dialogue from his debut film Breathless, a crime drama of 1960. À bout de souffle or Breathless made Godard one of the founders of French Cinema’s New Wave Movement.

This movie is a perfect example for La Nouvelle Vague. The radical approach of filmmaking included, the famous jump cut techniques, usage of handheld cameras with his director of photography, Raoul Coutard and sometimes directing scenes without pre-planned scripts.

Along with the other critics from the magazine Cahiers du Cinema who turned into filmmakers, Godard experimented with the film form, earning him the title of Iconoclast in world cinema. As Richard Roud, the founder of the New York film festival classified the world cinema “There is the Cinema before Godard and the cinema after Godard.” 

What made Godard unique was his intellectual way of filmmaking. Unlike many, he followed no prototypes and produced his own grammar in making the film. The audience visualized his narrative, continuity, sound, and cinematography experiments. In his unconventional making, he found clever anti-version of accustomed film techniques. 

He regarded Cinema as a medium to represent the history and conflict of human life. After the New wave, his movies took a turn into the humanist Marxist perspective of portraying human life. He expressed his strong contempt for capitalism, consumerism, and American Imperialism, resulting in the making of movies with the idea of political Cinema with a Marxist outlook and free from the existing cinematic production modes.

He always sticks close to his words, “Let’s do what has not been done. “He famously did not attend the Oscar when the Academy honoured him with the prestigious award. He later commented, “I think it’s strange. Which of my films have they seen? Do they actually know my films?”. His ultimate truth is Cinema which he calls ‘the truth twenty-four times per second.’

Kerala has got a special interest in Godard movies. In 2021, Kerala honoured him with the Lifetime achievement award at the International Film Festival of Kerala, and he showed up on the big screen of Nishagandi Auditorium with a Cuban cigar in his mouth, making his thousand Malayalee fans go bewildered. He began by mocking the language of colonisers, saying, “Ok, I will speak with the tongue of the dominators, I will speak in English.” He wholeheartedly accepted the honour of our land and the love of generations of his admirers.

Godard influenced generations of filmmakers, from Jim Jarmusch and Steven Soderbergh to Wong Kar Wai and Kelly Reichardt. His immortal staggering legacy will continue to inspire everyone who seeks to make a change in this world.

Adieu Légende ...

Ms. Atira Hanna, Assistant Professor of English, Al Shifa College of Arts and Science, Kizhattoor, Perinthalmanna