Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
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9. Alphaville (1965)
In 1965, Jean-Luc Godard took the famous pulp serial centering on secret agent Lemmy Caution and fashioned into a bizarre, 1984-esque dystopian sci-fi noir called "Alphaville." With it, he turned the iconic serial on its head. In Godard's adaptation, we find secret agent Lemmy Caution in Alphaville, a capital city in a distant galaxy run by a super-computer called Alpha-60. This super-computer has become a dictator, turning all of society into an algorithmic logic center, in which all human emotion has become illegal. Godard's sci-fi story was not only an excursion into a pulpy genre he'd never been, but also a complete 180 from the typical stories the iconic character of Lemmy Caution has found himself in before. The result was somewhat controversial, however "Alphaville" has far surpassed the character of Lemmy Caution and the typical pulp series all together.
8. A Married Woman (1964)
In a film that Godard completed in 3 months to secure a position at the Venice Film Festival, "A Married Woman," released in 1964, centers on a modern married Parisienne caught in an affair. However, this straightforward story in the hands of Godard turns into something completely different. Namely, it seems to be a commentary on the consumerist state of our modern world and how our modern society has turned into mechanical representations of passionate people, all iterating things they've read or seen as if they were the salespeople of these things. Even more importantly, our protagonist has been inundated with beauty standards, sexual expectations, and the general guise for how a woman should behave. "A Married Woman" finds Godard musing on how our consumerist culture has corrupted the very fabric of feminism.
7. A Woman is a Woman (1961)
If you were wondering whether Godard would make a more conventional film with his second effort, the short answer is no. "A Woman is a Woman" is yet another experimental Nouvelle Vague classic, as well as Godard's first film in color. The film centers on an exotic dancer who wants to have a baby, despite the rejection of her lover. Godard employs a heavy realism with the film while all the way inundating the film with classic 'Hollywood musical' tropes. The result is a stark and aggressive mixture of realism and artifice that seems to comment on the fabrication of film and how it seeps into the consciousness of human life. How very post-modern. On top of this, the film comments on the various gender dynamics between men and woman and the way in which art both reflects and affects these dynamics. "A Woman is a Woman" is yet another work of art from the master filmmaker.
6. Le Petit Soldat (1963)
"Le Petit Soldat" was originally intended to be Godard's second feature film after his breakthrough smash hit "Breathless." However, due to its depiction of the ongoing Algerian War, the French government halted its release. It would eventually get its release 3 years later in 1963, but by then the Algerian War had ended and the French New Wave movement was not at the zenith of its enthusiastic excitement. Even still, "Le Petit Soldat" is a great work by Godard and, unlike "Breathless" that came before it, is much more political. The film drips with cynicism about the Algerian War, modern torture methods, the French government's corruption, and the compromised state of the individual in the face of governmental duplicity. The film also introduces us to Anna Karina, who would go on the not only star in 6 more of Godard's films, but would marry him soon after meeting on this set. "Le Petit Soldat" may have been swept under the rug in its time, but it certainly stands as an important moment in the career of Jean-Luc Godard.
5. Band of Outsiders (1964)
There are many who consider "Band of Outsiders" most replicated and accessible film of Jean-Luc Godard's filmography. It centers on a group of restless youths who satiate their utter boredom through visits to cafes, running through the halls of the Louvre, and impromptu dance numbers. Oh, and planning a robbery on top. Their exuberant expectations of reality are all based on the media they consume: Hollywood B-movie thrillers and American crime novels. However, the thematic notion at the heart of this film is the same that beats at the heart of every Godard film: real life is no movie. Their youthful spirit is a double-edged sword: it invokes a creative and rebellious spirit filled with opportunity while also produces an innate naiveite that ultimately leads to disillusion. Regardless, the youthful spirit that attempt to shake the stagnation of cinematic boredom create iconic moments of cinema and an influential film that has since been replicated, ripped off, and paid homage to time and time again.
4. Contempt (1963)
Typically with a Godard, he shoots his film with a tactful realism. However, he undermines this realism with a post-modern lens which demonstrates how the artificiality of film still manages to capture something real and truthful. With his 1963 film "Contempt," he eliminates the need for his standard New Wave-esque post-modern construction and goes straight for unfiltered realism. He even goes one step further and captures realism in an utterly metatextual way. In adapting a classic novel, Godard was attempting to translate art into reality while American producers were insisting on demands for more sex all the while his marriage was unravelling. In "Contempt," a writer attempts to adapt a classic novel, muses about how to translate art into reality, is berated by an American producer to add more sex into his film, and all the while his marriage is unravelling. The film itself becomes a reflection of what is happening on the other side of the frame. With this, Godard is successfully able to capture reality in the clearest, more objective way possible even to the point of a metatextual breach between the lenses of the camera. Through this cold, objective reality, Godard sees himself in all his faults and fallacy on full display.
3. Vivre Sa Vie (1962)
After the explosive New Wave films of "Breathless" and "A Woman is a Woman," Godard, along with his muse Anna Karina, crafted a New Wave that had a much subtler approach than its predecessors. "Vivre Sa Vie" is 12 vignettes of a woman's slow descent into prostitution. What's intriguing about this descent is the mundanity of it all. Our protagonist Nana's life is filled with cinema, pinball, art, magazines, pin-ups, ads, and other arrangements of commerce. Nana seems to act passively in her own life and because of this, slowly becomes another piece of commerce in this post-war consumerist society. Nana need for money and her own passive observation of her own life leads her down a path that turns her into a mechanism of the capitalist society that surrounds her. Like Nana, are we too quietly resigning ourselves to this consumerist utopia in order to fill an empty void inside ourselves just so we don't have to take responsibility for our own lives?
2. Breathless (1960)
One could spend all day arguing what film started the French New Wave movement. Was it Agnes Varda's "La Pointe Courte," Francois Tuffaut's "The 400 Blows," Alain Resnais' "Hiroshima Mon Amour," or Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless." Regardless of what answer you land on, one thing is for certain: There is cinema before "Breathless," and cinema after "Breathless." Godard's completely documentary-style and freeform nature of his 1960 masterpiece "Breathless" is like visual jazz. Nothing is off limits in the film. All rules are broken. All conventionality is thrown out the window. The visual language of cinema completely changed and was set free with Godard's attempt to destroy cinematic convention. On top of this, the film wades into the post-modernist waters that many post-modern films to come should be thankful for. It's breezy, detached, critical, whimsical, nihilistic, reflective, and whatever else is needs to be. Make of it what you will, or don't. The film does not care. It has no allegiances. It offers you no thoughts, except contradictory and paradoxical ruminations on the nature of art and humanity that all boil and mix into this freeform stew of cinematic exploration and rebellion that does nothing but take your breath away.
1. Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 "Pierrot le Fou" is perhaps his most challenging, the most creatively connected to Godard himself, an embodiment of contemporary France, and the summation of the French New Wave movement itself. It starts Godard favorites Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina as they embarked on a lawless venture out into the unknown, away from the bourgeoise existence they dragged them down. Infused with nihilism that extends from anxieties over the leftover remnants of the Algerian War, Vietnam, and the Cold War, its characters and Godard himself (through cinematography, editing, and realization) grasp desperately at anything that makes them feel something, anything to connect themselves to life itself. Through this search, Godard employs a 'throw everything at the wall' approach to his typical New Wave creative style and in doing so, pushes cinema into a new philosophical zenith; a new cinematic landscape of formlessness that connects art to country, art to self, and art to art itself.
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