the last wave of the New Wave is no more

For the generations born after 1990, the youngest, Jean-Luc Godard was the archetype of the artist of the post-war years as one fantasizes: an old language, reflections that flirt with intellectual masturbation, a style inimitable of his own and a disillusioned repartee. In the many archive images, we discover the man smoking his cigar in the middle of the TV set, legs crossed in the middle of a reflexive tirade, all to his own character. Because Jean-Luc Godard treated his life and the societies that surrounded him like his own films: with a critical eye, between impertinence and rejection.

Auto Crit

“ I am not a filmmaker, I am a critic : I continue to make films as a critic. […] When I’m filming, I’m in a critical state and therefore I have an automatic critical function. The microscope is a critical instrument of reality “, he explains in an exchange with the journalist Christian Defaye, in 1990. Critique, critique, critique. It was his first paid job, after a quick stint as a cameraman on television which ended in a theft reported to the police – Godard had a tendency to kleptomania. In 1952, at just 22, he wrote reviews for the magazine The Notebooks of the Cinemawhich has not yet celebrated its first candle.

After a series of short films, he launched into feature films. Breathless is a dense explosion, carried by an actor unknown to the public, whose rhythm only calms down to film love. John Paul Belmondowhom he had spotted a few years earlier and had already starred in a short film, Charlotte and her Jules, bursts the screen. He will be his muse for three films, which will be enough to impose the actor and the director in French cinema.

But it’s ” Bebel who will refuse to work for him fifteen years later, for fear that his cinematographic fantasies will get the better of his own career. Because Godard is also criticized, often benevolently, sometimes forcefully, for his apparent casualness on the set, his concrete break with conventions and his outrageous, calculated character. For his political commitment, too, which takes him away from the classic cinematographic circuit for a time.

The revolutionary bourgeois

In the midst of the societal revolution of the 1960s, between the fight against the Vietnam War in the United States and May 1968 in France, Jean-Luc Godard finds himself wanting to draw the world that is shaken, social movements, revolutions. He got involved in the Parisian student revolt, then turned in 1969 in Czechoslovakiaone year after the prague spring », Pravdadissects capitalist British society in British Soundsby questioning the place of women and that of class consciousness.

After this very politically engaged period, the bourgeois origin of Jean-Luc Godard was systematically reminded of him. Born into a wealthy family in the heart of Paris from rich Protestant bankers, he assumed his origins until the end of his life, in an interview with Darius Rochebin for Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS), in 2014: “ They were enlightened, open middle-class people with a great love of literature. […] I had a good and bad upbringing, there was something that helps me to be more free today… In certain aspects, the current youth, I find them less free than what I was in this lack of freedom at that time. »

A difficult director

On the set, his mastery does not only inspire those around him: the fear is sometimes there, too. That of disappointing, or doing wrong. Jean-Luc Godard, a formidable critic, has his eyes everywhere, all the time, and his genius is matched only by his high standards of himself and others. During the realization of alas for me with Gérard Depardieu in 1992, the machinist described the Godard method to the RTS journalist: “ Human communication is delicate, we have very little information in advance. When you travel with a lot of material, a light truck and a machinery, you have to have everything at your disposal without knowing what you’re going to get out of the truck. […] He’s a very sensitive person, and it’s very difficult to have a human relationship with him to be able to really be in good conditions. »

Jean-Luc Godard has sometimes been ” sadistic with the actors », dares Darius Rochebin. ” I must have been, no doubt “replies the director, laconic before continuing:” But sometimes, actors are on the sidelines and you have to say to yourself, it doesn’t matter whether they do badly or whether they do well, whether they do, that’s already it. His pedagogical side sometimes goes too far for some. Gérard Depardieu will tell the magazine SoFilm : “ I don’t give a damn about Godard. Simply, you speak to me of the cinema. Godard is not cinema, he is a teacher. »

Behind the requirement, the small hands feast in front of the talent of the director. “ He’s a cinematic genius. We had a bit of an image of someone who didn’t prepare anything, but he’s someone who masters everything, there’s no coincidence, it’s impressive “says an assistant operator, also on the set of Alas for me. An intensity at work praised by all those who have worked with him, from near and far, which clashes with the image of casualness that he builds for himself.

Escape from reality

Godard has never ceased to follow the evolution of cinema as a whole, without once losing his critical eye. He who filmed reality like no one else, preferring the street and the outdoors to studios and sets, and even shot in 3Dgently pokes fun at the ever-increasing industry in an interview with Darius Rochebin: 3D doesn’t change anything. There is a directive: it is to go deeper, to be closer to reality. But those who take refuge in reality are those who lack imagination. »

This reflection, which may seem paradoxical given the director’s attachment to reality, is not. Jean-Luc Godard’s cinema endeavors to remind the spectator of the existence of the film, through abrupt cuts in time, camera gazes and sometimes bypassing the fourth wall. He thus strived to recall the status of his films as works of art. An artistic work, with a direction, always, to transcend reality. The director declared in 2014 on RTS to have seen Avatarby James Cameron, and having found that there were things once in a while when they passed through the trees there was a little feeling like that… but it wasn’t going anywhere “.

The cinema was for him a need, an outlet. ” In a way, there is a certain cowardice in being an artist, since one can take refuge in art where, as Nietzsche said, “we have the art not to die of the truth”, but we also have the art to live from the truth. But I also quote Ernest Renan : “The truth might be sad.” So it’s better to laugh often “, he declared in front of Christian Defaye, in 1990. His mental illness perhaps explains this protective vision of art. Interviewed by Darius Rochebin in 2014, who asked him if he thought he was a genius, Godard defined himself as autistic: “ No, I would say… I am what is called, in science, a high-functioning autistic, and I prefer to say a level-case autistic! »

Above all, we will remember Jean-Luc Godard’s sensitivity on edge, his ability to film bodies and love, his ability to make the feeling of love carnal, to make it go beyond the screen to make the inactive and passive spectator vibrate. His legendary phlegm and his repartee, too. They can be summed up in two lines of dialogue, on RTS in 2014, at the twilight of his life:

– Did you feel like you were part of a revolution?

– Nope. A riot, perhaps.

►To listen also: All the cinemas of the world – Godard or the permanent revolution