Friday, March 29, 2024

Jean-Luc Godard, giant of the French New Wave, dies at 91

Jean-Luc Godard, the French-Swiss director who was a key figure in the Nouvelle Vague, the film-making movement that revolutionised cinema in the late 1950s and 60s, has died aged 91.

Godard died “peacefully at home” in Switzerland with his wife Anne-Marie Mieville at his side, AFP reported.

Godard burst onto the scene with 1960’s À bout de souffle (Breathless), which started a run of acclaimed releases that rewrote the rules of film.

Godard’s rich seam of influential films in the 1960s also included Le Mépris (Contempt), Bande à Part (Band of Outsiders) and Alphaville.

He started as a film critic before stepping behind the camera with the stylish and edgy Breathless.

His work brought a new verve and daring to cinema and influenced directors from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Godard “had the vision of a genius”.

In a tribute on Twitter, Mr Macron wrote: “He was like an apparition in French cinema. Then he became a master of it.

“Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers, invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art. We have lost a national treasure, a man who had the vision of a genius.”

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