The godfather of France’s New Wave cinema, film director Jean-Luc Godard died on Tuesday aged 91. He pushed cinematic boundaries and inspired iconoclastic directors decades after his 1960s heyday. Known for classics such as “Breathless” and “Contempt”, Godard was among the world’s most acclaimed directors. These films broke with convention and helped kickstart a new way of filmmaking. They had handheld camera work, jump cuts, and existential dialogue.
“Jean-Luc Godard died peacefully at home, surrounded by loved ones,” his wife Anne-Marie Mieville and producers said in a statement published by several French media, reported Reuters.
He will be cremated but reportedly, there will be no official ceremony. On 3 December 1930, Godard was born in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. His affluent parents came from Protestant families of Franco–Swiss descent. The director’s mother was the daughter of Julien Monod, a founder of the Banque Paribas.
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“A movie should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order,” Godard once said, Reuters further reported.
Godard was not alone in creating France’s New Wave. He shares the credit with at least a dozen peers including Francois Truffaut and Eric Rohmer, most of them pals from the trendy, bohemian Left Bank of Paris in the late 1950s. However, he became the poster child of the movement.
The movement spawned offshoots in Hollywood, Japan, and Czechoslovakia. It also has an impact in Brazil.
