“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.”
Breathless a 1960 film which rewrote the film grammar and the director who offered a new vision to the world of cinema bid adieu.
A man started his career as a film critic and introduced a whole new grammar to the world of cinema. His films always went beyond conventional storytelling, this is the reason they haunt us, inspire us to stretch our limits and leap beyond what is possible.
I often used his films as an example to teach cinema. When I study about Godard and his style of film making through his contemporaries and books, it is a whole new world of experience. Since the last two decades Godard has always inspired me for visual design, composition, photography and AV. He always made directors take one step further for the meaning, narration, visual language and beyond.
Raoul Coutard as a cinematographer worked closely with Godard, Agnès Guillemot as an editor shared her experiences with Godard. François Truffaut a friend and Nouvelle Vague film maker, explores Godard. Andrei Tarkovsky who enriched Russian cinema appreciated Godard for his creative decisions. Alfred Hitchcock studied Godard closely to put a cut on his celluloid. Robert Bresson and Federico Fellini the contemporaries of Godard, love Godard for his style of filmmaking. Jacques Tati admired Godard for not dramatizing the film scene but creating the magic with moving images. It was the life cinephiles lived through ages. The later generation of filmmakers from Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino and many other from US, Europe and Asia just love Godard. Writing from India, I remember Godard, whose films are studied in film schools and don’t know how many students even today spend years into the spell of Godard. Many find their own style and rest are satisfied with studying Godard for the rest of their life.
Today with a heavy heart, I write this piece. I remember, it was 2017, when my two students got a chance to be a part of Hungarian Film School, in our last meeting, I just asked them, give me a favor, convey my regards to Godard. Long Live Godard !
RahulMate 