French film director and screenwriter Jean-Luc Godard (1930) passed away today, 13 September 2022. He was one of the most important members of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave). Godard first received global acclaim for his feature À bout de souffle/Breathless (1959), helping to establish the New Wave movement. Godard's films have inspired many directors including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Altman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wong Kar-wai. He has been married twice, to actresses Anna Karina and Anne Wiazemsky, both of whom starred in several of his films.


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjerberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 6100. Photo: Robert Lebeck / Combi Press, Amsterdam. Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard in Berlin, 1961. The couple was in Berlin for the presentation of Godard's third feature film Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961) at the 11th Berlin International Film Festival. For her role in this film, Karina won the festival's Silver Bear award for Best Actress.


French postcard by Éditions Hazan, Paris, 1996. Photo: Raymond Depardon / Magnum. Caption: Jean Seberg and Jean-Luc Godard after the shooting of À bout de souffle.


French postcard by Editions Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris, 1997. Photo: Traverso. Caption: Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard, Festival de Cannes 1963.


French postcard in the Collection Magie Noire by Éditions Hazan, Paris, 1994, no. 6430. Photo: Bruno Barbey / Magnum Photos. Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, 1970.


French postcard by La Cinémathèque française. Photo: Georges Pierre. Caption: Jean-Luc Godard, photo of the shooting of Pierrot le Fou, 1965.


French postcard in the Collection Magie Noire by Éditions Hazan, Paris, 1988, no. 6077. Photo: Pierre-Olivier Deschamps / Agence Vu, Paris. Caption: Jean-Luc Godard, Mai 86.

Breaking with many then prevailing conventions
Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris in 1930. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. The family returned to Switzerland during World War II.

In 1949 he started studying ethnology at the Sorbonne. During this period he got to know François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Éric Rohmer. In 1950 he started a film newspaper 'Gazette du cinéma' with Rivette and Rohmer and collaborated on their films. In January 1952 he started writing for the film magazine 'Les Cahiers du cinéma', which had been founded the year before by André Bazin.

In 1953 he worked as a construction worker at a dam in Switzerland. With the money he earned, he made his first film, Opération Béton/Operation Concrete, a short documentary film about the construction of the dam. In 1956 he returned to France and resumed his work at Cahiers. During that time he made several short comedies and tributes to Mack Sennett and Jean Cocteau.

In 1959 he directed his first feature film, À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960), based on a screenplay by François Truffaut. This film played a key role in the birth of the Nouvelle Vague. It broke with many then prevailing conventions, with its references, influences from the American (gangster) film, the low budget, and the rough editing.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg starred and the film was a huge success with audiences and critics. Godard won the Silver Bear for this film at the Berlin Film Festival 1960. Jean Seberg was nominated for a BAFTA Award. That year Godard also married Anna Karina, who would appear in many of his films. In 1964 they formed a production company, Anouchka Films. They divorced in 1965.


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma series by Editions Art & Scène, Paris, no. CF 29, 1995. Photo: Raymond Cauchetier, 1959. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in A bout de souffle/Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960).


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma series by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, no. CF 83, 1995. Photo: Raymond Cauchetier, 1959. Jean-Paul Belmondo in A bout de souffle/Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960). In the background: the French poster for the American film Ten Seconds to Hell (Robert Aldrich, 1959). The caption translates as 'Right up close to Satan' comes very close.


French postcard by Editions Art & Scene, no. CF 98, 1996. Photo: R. Cauchetier. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in A bout de souffle/Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960).


French postcard by Éditions Art & Scène, no. CF 107, 1996. Photo: R. Cauchetier. Jean Seberg in À bout de souffle/Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960).


British postcard by Pyramid, Leicester. French poster for À bout de souffle/Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960).


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, no. CF 102, 1996. Photo: R. Cauchetier. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy in Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961).

Making political films political
In 1961 Jean-Luc Godard made his first colour film, the comedy Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961) starring Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. It is a tribute to American musical comedy, filmed in cinemascope. Godard proved to be very productive during those years.

His first flop, the war film Les Carabiniers/The Carabineers (1963), was a tribute to Jean Vigo. That year he also made one of his greatest successes, Le Mépris/Contempt (1963) with Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, and Fritz Lang.

Then followed Bande à part/Band of Outsiders (1964) with Anna Karina and Samy Frey, Pierrot le fou/Crazy Pierrot (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, and the Science-Fiction film Alphaville/Alphaville: A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965) with Eddie Constantine. The film won the Golden Bear award of the 15th Berlin International Film Festival in 1965. Other films from those years were Masculin, feminin (1966) with Jean-Pierre Léaud, and Week-end (1967) with Mireille Darc.

Around the student uprisings of 1968, Godard became interested in Maoism. At that time he started an experimental political phase, which lasted until 1980. In the summer of 1968, together with Jean-Pierre Gorin, among others, he founded the Dziga Vertov Group, which wanted to make "political films political".

Some films from that time are Le Gai Savoir (1968), Pravda and One Plus One/Sympathy for the Devil (1968), the latter of which includes a unique recording of the studio build-up by the Rolling Stones of the classic 'Sympathy for the Devil'. In 1972 he made Tout va bien (1972), with Jane Fonda and Yves Montand in the lead roles, followed by Letter to Jane, a film about a photograph of Jane Fonda, which Gorin and Godard discuss. In 1972 he also met Anne-Marie Miéville, his later wife, with whom he made many films. This phase ended in 1980.


Dutch postcard by Hafbo film, no. 162. Anna Karina in Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961).


French postcard. French poster for Vivre sa vie/My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962).


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma series by Editions Art & Scène, Paris, no. CF 101, 1996. Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli in Le Mépris(Jean-Luc Godard, 1963).


French postcard by BS, no. 31, 2005. French poster for Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) starring Brigitte Bardot. Poster design: Pierre Okley, 1963.


French postcard, no. 5979. Reproduction of French poster for Le Mépris/Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) starring Brigitte Bardot. Poster design: G. Allard.


French postcard in the Collection Cinémathèque Suisse by CVB Publishers. French poster for Une femme mariée/A Married Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964).


French postcard by La Cinémathèque Française. Photos: DR / Georges Pierre. Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina during the shooting of Pierrot le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965).


French postcard by La Cinémathèque française, no. CF 5006, 1998. Photo: UGC Da International. Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965).

Dismissed as blasphemy by the Catholic Church
After twelve years of low budget, militant left-wing, and otherwise experimental film and video projects outside of commercial distribution, Jean-Luc Godard's first film that was more mainstream and accessible again was the drama Sauve qui peut (la vie)/Every Man for Himself (1980) with Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc, and Nathalie Baye.

His films after that time are more autobiographical. For example, in Sauve qui peut (la vie)/Every Man for Himself there was a character named Godard. In 1982 and 1983 he made three related films Passion (1982), Prénom Carmen (1983) and Je vous salue, Marie (1984). The latter film was dismissed as blasphemy by the Catholic Church.

The film King Lear (1987), which he made with Norman Mailer, also caused controversy. It was a bizarre postmodern take on the Shakespeare play, with theatre director Peter Sellars as a descendant of Shakespeare, Burgess Meredith as the mobster Don Learo, Jean-Luc Godard as the professor, and Woody Allen as a character called Mr. Alien. Not entirely coincidentally, Mr. Alien was also nicknamed Jean-Luc Godard.

From 1989 to 1998, he made the series Histoire(s) du Cinéma, about the twentieth century and the history of film. His most recent film was the avantgarde essay Le Livre d'image/The Image Book (2018).

Jean-Luc Godard passed away in 2022 in Rolle, Switzerland. He was 91.


French postcard by La Cinémathèque française. Photo: Georges Pierre. Jean-Paul Belmondo in Pierrot le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965).


French postcard in the Collection Cinémathèque Suisse by CVB Publishers. French poster for Pierrot le fou/Pierrot Goes Wild (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965).


French postcard by Editions Le Malibran, Saint-Dié, no. CF 30. Photo: Georges Pierre. Anna Karina in Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965). Photography: Raoul Coutard.


French postcard in the Collection Cinémathèque Suisse by CVB Publishers. French poster for Alphaville: une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution/Alphaville: A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965).


Swiss postcard by CVB Publishers / News Productions, no. 56935. Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse. Reproduction of French poster for Masculin féminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966). Caption: the sex and youth of today's France.


French postcard in the Collection Cinémathèque Suisse by CVB Publishers. French poster for Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle/Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967).


Swiss postcard by CVB Publishers, no. 56936. Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse. Reproduction of Franco-Italian poster for Week-end (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967).


Swiss postcard by CVB Publishers. no. 57132. Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse. Reproduction of French poster for Tout va bien/Just Great (Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972).


Vintage postcard by News Productions, Baulmes & Stroud / Filmwelt, Berlin, no. 56528. Photo: Collection Cinémathéque Suisse, Lausanne. Anna Baldaccini and Isabelle Huppert in Sauve qui peut (la vie)/Every Man for Himself (Jean-Luc Godard, 1980).


French postcard by La Cinémathèque française, no. CF 5009, 1998. Photo: UGC DA International. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in A bout de souffle/Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960).

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.

Nouvelle Vague
Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard married during the shooting of their next film, Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy. It is a tribute to American musical comedy and the first film which Godard shot in colour and Cinemascope.

Judd Blaise at AllMovie: "Rather than the sometimes alienating, dense intellectualism of later Godard works, Une femme est une femme offers aesthetic pleasure through luxurious visuals and a charming musical score by Michel Legrand. Against this bright backdrop, Karina proves particularly fetching, capturing the film's frolicsome mood in an unforced manner. While not one of Godard's most groundbreaking or influential films, Une femme est une femme is one of his most appealing and pleasurable efforts."

J. Hoberman at Criterion: "Mainly, A Woman Is a Woman is a valentine to Karina, who became pregnant during the course of the movie’s production; she and Godard were married in March 1961, an event that made the cover of Paris Match." At the Berlin Film Festival in 1961, Anna Karina was awarded Best Actress for Une femme est une femme.

In the following years, the couple made Vivre sa Vie/My Life to Live (1962), Bande à part/Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution/Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965) with Eddie Constantine, Pierrot le fou/Pierrot Goes Wild (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Made in U.S.A. (1966) with Jean-Pierre Léaud and the anthology film Le plus vieux métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (1967).

Though their cinematic collaboration seemed harmonious, their relationship was tumultuous and bitter behind the scenes. It was made all the more difficult by the fact that their relationship was under constant public scrutiny. Their three-year marriage ended in 1964, though they continued to work together until 1966. In 1967, Godard and Karina divorced.


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V, Rotterdam, no. 6099. Photo: Combi Press, Amsterdam.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden-Westf., no. 1872.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 133.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 265. Photo: publicity still for La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 330. Photo: publicity still for La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966).

Hollywood
Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "From all reports, Karina and Godard's relationship was symbiotic; it is certainly no coincidence that both actress and director went into a temporary artistic eclipse after their 1967 breakup."

Anna Karina's acting career was not, however, limited to Godard's films, and she had a successful collaboration with other well-known directors. Some consider her best performance her role in La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966) in which she plays an intelligent, freedom-loving woman who is forced into a convent against her will.

She also acted in the Italian productions Le Soldatesse/The Camp Followers (Valerio Zurlini, 1965) and the Albert Camus adaptation Lo Straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967) starring Marcello Mastroianni.

Karina also maintained a singing career and scored hits with 'Sous le soleil exactement' and 'Roller Girl'. Both songs, which Serge Gainsbourg had specially written for her, were taken from the TV musical Anna (Pierre Koralnik, 1967).

After her divorce in 1967, she went to Hollywood. She acted in Justine (George Cukor, 1969) and then returned to Paris. Her later films included Laughter in the Dark (Tony Richardson, 1969), Rendez-vous à Bray/Appointment in Bray (André Delvaux, 1971) with Mathieu Carrière, Pane e cioccolata/Bread and Chocolate (Franco Brusati, 1973) starring Nino Manfredi, Chinesisches Roulette/Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976), and Olyan mint otthon/Just Like Home (Márta Mészáros, 1978) with Jan Nowicki.


Small Romanian collector's card. Photo: Anna Karina and Gérard Barray in Sheherazade (Pierre-Gaspard-Huit, 1963).


Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: Anna Karina in Shéhérazade (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1963).


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 177/69, 1969. Retail price: 0,20 M. Photo: Unifrance Film.


Big East-German card by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 6/71. Photo: Unifrance Film.


East-German postcard by Progress Film-Verleih, Berlin, no. 154/76, 1976. Photo: Linke.

Chansons de films
Anna Karina acted in but also wrote, produced and directed Vivre ensemble/Living Together (1973). She has also written three novels and made several appearances on television. In 2005 she released 'Chansons de films', a collection of songs sung in films. She appeared on stage in Jacques Rivette's adaptation of La Religieuse/The Nun, 'Pour Lucrece, Toi et Tes Nuages', Francoise Sagan's 'Il Fait Beau Jour et Nuit' and Ingmar Bergman's 'Apres La Répétition/After the Repetition'.

Incidentally, she played in films like L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss (André Delvaux, 1988) with Gian Maria Volonté, Haut bas fragile/Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995) and the romantic thriller The Truth About Charlie (Jonathan Demme, 2002) starring Mark Wahlberg.

Karina's final film as a director was Victoria (2008) in which she also starred. Mark Deming at AllMovie: "Thirty-five years after directing her first feature film, iconic actress Anna Karina once again steps behind the camera for this charming comedy-drama shot in Canada. Jimmy (Emmanuel Reichenbach) and Stanislas (Jean-Francois Moran) are a pair of nightclub performers who play second-rate gay nightclubs as part of a drag act called 'Les Lolitas'."

After Godard, Anna Karina was married three times more: to scriptwriter-actor Pierre Fabre (1968–1973), actor-director Daniel Duval (1978–1981) and director Dennis Berry (1982–1994). Since 2009, she has been married to Maurice Cooks.

On 14 December 2019, Anna Karina died in a Paris hospital of the effects of cancer at the age of 79, her agent Laurent Balandras told AFP, adding that she passed away in the company of her fourth husband, American director Dennis Berry.


Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor.


Scenes from Vivre sa vie (1962). Source: Paulo A (YouTube).


Anna Karina sings 'Jamais je ne t'ai dit que je t'aimerai toujours' in Pierrot le Fou (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo. Source: Tobe Auster (YouTube).


Trailer Made in U.S.A. (1966). Source: Danios 12345 (YouTube).

Sources: Judd Blaise (AllMovie - Page now defunct), J. Hoberman (Criterion), James Travers (French Films), Mark Deming (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Hal Erickson (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Luis Miguel Oliveira (Czarabox - Portuguese), The Guardian, IMDb and Wikipedia.

This post was last updated on 3 December 2024.