R.I.P. Jean-Luc Godard

I process loss slowly. This is a detriment to someone who writes about what is going on. And of course by “slowly” I mean it takes me a couple of days. Jean-Luc Godard changed the world. Breathless had the same impact on movies as the Beatles getting off the plane on their first trip to America had on … everything. Nothing would ever be quite the same again.

Just this past December, I decided to watch Godard’s filmography in chronological order, starting with his shorts (many of which are on YouTube). I wrote about this experience in my December 2021 viewing diary. Of course I’ve seen all of his major films, in some cases many many times. His politics were atrocious – Mao? Really? – and while I didn’t “engage” with his films on a political level – in fact I found it naive and irritating – I appreciated the mere presence of politics in love stories or domestic dramas. Politics are in the air we breathe. American films totally ignore this, so much so it can be extremely alienating the first time you watch a Godard films. Why are young runaway lovers talking about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and reading out loud to each other? Well, you know, that’s what young people do. Or … they take it too far. Uhm …

One of my first thoughts when I heard the news was a deep sense of gratitude? not the right word, really … more like thankfulness – thankfulness directed towards him, and his spirit, or where he is right now, thankfulness for Breathless. Contempt. Pierrot le fou. Masculin Féminin. 2 or 3 Three Things I Know About Her. La Chinoise. Sympathy for the Devil. Weekend. Band of Outsiders. I return to these films again and again and again. I first saw most of them decades ago. They never get old. They have enriched my life enormously just by existing.

I don’t know quite how to say it except in blunt language: I’m not sure who I’d be without this moment …

in my life.

Or this:

Or this shot:

There are so many more. These moments, scenes, images aren’t outside of me. They’re in me. It’s like James Dean in his red jacket in Rebel Without a Cause… or Brando on his knees screaming in Streetcar… or Bette Davis walking across a room in … anything. It’s like Al Pacino on the sidewalk in front of the bank in Dog Day Afternoon, or Elvis sliding down the seesaw in the “Jailhouse Rock” number. It’s like Joan Crawford’s silhouette. These things have STAYING power and significance and meaning for me and they come up again and again as references – cultural, emotional …

Speaking of all of this … Godard was fully aware of his own frame of references and how they impacted him, working on him subconsciously and consciously. He put all of it into his movies. Check out the girls’ bathroom in his1957 short All the Boys are Called Patrick.

You could see this as “ironic”, I suppose. And, of course, Godard employed irony. Lots of it. But part of his seismic impact was the enthusiasm behind the irony. It wasn’t JUST post-modern piecing together of disconnected fragments. This is the landscape of our dreams.

There are *so many* Godard moments that operate like this for me. Anna Karina’s FACE, in general. It’s not just a beautiful face. It’s an important face. Once you see it, you are just a little bit altered. Things won’t be the same again, because now you know her face.

Godard revolutionized the movies – in the same way John Cassavetes did, or the Beatles did with music (or … the Stones: no wonder Godard worked with them) – Breathless went off like a BOMB across the water, and the reverberations shook Hollywood out of its stupor. Breathless inspired a generation. The most amazing thing is that they – i.e. the French New Wave people – took our (meaning: American Hollywood directors) so-called trash – our B-movies, our crime noirs, our rock ‘n roll bobby-sox “we hate our parents” movies – they took our FLUFF and redeemed it, loved it more than our “serious” movies, reflected our “trash” back to us and showed us the brightness of its gleam. The French saved for us what was special about what we were doing, until we were ready to claim it again and perceive its value. I mean, all of these super cool French directors adored Johnny Guitar, written off by most American critics, but fetishized totally – and rightly so – by the French. I mean, check this out. Banging the drum for Johnny Guitar.

The French New Wave pre-dates my life on the planet, but as soon as I “got into” cinema, I became aware of this crowd – Godard and Truffaut and Agnes Varda and Chabrol and etc. You can’t avoid them, not if you’re into movies. In the same way you can’t avoid Kurosawa or Bergman or etc. I may have been a child of the 80s, but I paid very close attention to Roger Ebert’s columns and these names came up all the time and I wanted to learn: Who is that?

I found out.

And I discovered Breathless, and Band of Outsiders and Contempt and Weekend and, and and ….. I joined the crowd.

It’s Godard’s world. We’re just living in it. He lived such a long life. I will miss knowing he’s out there.