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French New Wave fans, rejoice. One of Jean-Luc Godard’s most colorful, joyful, and unapologetically playful masterpieces of the 1960s has received a new 4K restoration. And New Yorkers will have the chance to catch it on the big screen this February.

Godard’s 1961 musical romantic comedy “A Woman Is a Woman” will screen at Film Forum in New York City from February 7-20, which will mark the U.S. premiere of the restoration.

Released in 1961, a year after the Cahiers du Cinema veteran secured himself filmmaking immortality with “Breathless,” “A Woman Is a Woman” was Godard’s tribute to Hollywood’s Technicolor musical comedies. Featuring the bright color scheme that he would return to for films like “Contempt” and “Pierrot Le Fou,” the film stars Godard’s then-wife and frequent collaborator Anna Karina as a dancer who, eager to have a child, entertains the romantic pursuits of two men...

New York-based Rialto Pictures is gearing up for the release of Studiocanal’s 4K restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1961 musical comedy “A Woman Is a Woman.”

The film, Rialto’s first release of 2025, stars Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film will hit selected U.S. theaters on Feb. 7.

The new restoration, which premiered this year in Locarno, was made from the negative 35mm original copy, digitized by Paris-based post production company Hiventy and realized by Studiocanal with the collaboration of France’s National Center of Cinema (Cnc).

Rialto’s biggest success this year was the 75th anniversary of “The Third Man,” Rialto Co-President Adrienne Halpern told Variety at the Lumière Film Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France.

‘The Third Man’

The 4K restoration of Carol Reed’s 1949 classic, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, was carried out by Deluxe Restoration on behalf of Studiocanal.

Actor and singer Vanessa Paradis, a household name in France, captivated audiences with candid and charismatic reflections on her multifaceted career during a masterclass at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon.

When asked about working alongside French cinema legends Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Patrice Leconte’s 1998 action comedy “Half a Chance,” she didn’t beat about the bush.

“Jean-Paul Belmondo was always surrounded by people; there was a lot of laughter while Alain Delon was alone – just him and his dogs,” she recalled. “But when the two of them got together, you could tell they were very fond of each other. They were happy to make this film together.”

Paradis acknowledged the unique privilege of collaborating with such iconic figures. “I knew how lucky I was back then, but today I realize it even more,” she said, adding with a grin, “I got to spend four months with them,...

Bette Gordon in her home office. Photograph by the author.The problem that I have dealt with in my whole career is that I essentially am not an American filmmaker. That I am anything but.The first person to place a camera in Bette Gordon’s hands was her father, Kenneth. A photographer himself, he met Gordon’s mother at a mutual acquaintance’s wedding, where he discreetly swapped place cards in order to sit next to her. They would later welcome Bette into the world he had been vigilantly chronicling, and by the time she was twelve, he began to teach her how to look. He advised her to hold her breath when snapping a photograph, how to frame images, where to find beauty. Since these teachings, Gordon has built a career upon images of eroticism and crime, arranging them into stories of a repressed woman working the box office at a porn theater,...

Francis Ford Coppola describes his experience working with controlling producers on Is Paris Burning?. Released in 1966, Is Paris Burning is a war film that chronicles resistance groups forming to fight against the Germans during WW2 France. Is Paris Burning? was directed by Ren Clment and featured a leading cast including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer, Leslie Caron, and Jean-Pierre Cassel. While Coppola did not direct the film, he was involved in writing the screenplay for Is Paris Burning?

As per Korbini, Coppola explains how he got around the word of a controlling producer while working on Is Paris Burning? According to the screenwriter, Is Paris Burning had a producer named Paul Graetz who was "very domineering." As part of this act of control, Graetz did not want director Ren Clment to have anything to do with the script of Is Paris Burning? When the original screenwriter died and Coppola took over,...

French director Claude Lelouch first broke out internationally with 1966 romance A Man and a Woman, starring Anouk Aimee and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a widow and widower whose fledgling love story is held back by past personal tragedies.

Nearly 60 years later, the soundtrack by late composer Francis Lai – and in particular its title track, which is often referred to as ‘Chabadabada’ for its catchy refrain – remains as famous, if not more famous, than the Oscar and Cannes Palme d’Or-winning feature

That movie would mark the start of a 52-year, 35-picture collaboration between Lelouch and Lai, which was at the heart of a music-themed masterclass by Lelouch at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

The director is at the festival to receive the Cartier Glory To The Filmmaker Award as well as for the premiere of new work Finalement, starring an ensemble cast led by Kad Merad and also featuring Elsa Zylberstain,...

The legendary, and legendarily handsome, international movie star Alain Delon passed away on Sunday, August 18, 2024. He was 88.

Delon was best known for playing heavies and tough guys, but he had incredible range, portraying all kinds of roles in his 60-plus-year career. Most American film students have experienced the bolt of electricity seeing Delon for the first time in an acclaimed international hit like René Clément's Tom Ripley adaptation "Purple Noon," or Luchino Visconti's "Rocco and his Brothers" (1960) or the same director's massive historical epic "The Leopard" (1963). Delon made several films with Clément, and was often paired with most of the best European directors of his generation, including Michelangelo Antonioni (he was in "L'Eclisse"), Louis Malle ("Spirits of the Dead"), Joseph Losey ("The Assassination of Trotsky"), Agnès Varda ("One Hundred and One Nights"), and even Jean-Luc Godard ("New Wave"). Anyone with a subscription to the Criterion Channel has likely...

Alain Delon, the striking French leading man known for his uncommonly beautiful, coldly calculating villains in Le Samouraï and Purple Noon, has died. As confirmed by his family to France’s Afp news agency, Delon died Sunday after years of health complications stemming from a 2019 stroke. He was 88.An icon of French cinema,...

Alain Delon, one of the biggest international movie stars of all time, has passed away at 88. The actor, who’d been in poor health in recent years, is widely considered one of the most iconic French stars ever. First rising to fame as part of a new crop of actors during the French New Wave, Delon was the first person to play Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley in Purple Noon, while also starring in classics such as The Leopard, Rocco and His Sisters and many more.

Yet, it was his role as the cold, calculating hitman in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai which remains the part he’s arguably best known for. Playing an impeccably dressed killer named Jeff, who is double-crossed by his employers, pretty much every hitman movie in the last fifty years owes a debt of gratitude to his performance. Chow Yun-Fat’s style in A Better Tomorrow...

Two-time Academy Award winner Alexander Payne (“The Holdovers”) teased the upcoming sequel to his beloved black comedy “Election” Sunday in Sarajevo while dishing on his desire to dabble in genre, sharing more details of an upcoming Western while also expressing his hopes “to do a good car chase film.”

Payne, who’s appearing at the Sarajevo Film Festival to receive a lifetime achievement award, gave an update on the anticipated sequel to his 1999 adaptation of the novel by Tom Perrotta, starring Reese Witherspoon as the ruthless go-getter Tracy Flick.

Paramount is reported to be developing a sequel for streaming service Paramount+, “Tracy Flick Can’t Win,” based on Perrotta’s follow-up novel, published in 2022, with Witherspoon reprising her iconic role and Payne tapped to direct.

“There is talk. Jim Taylor and I are conceiving that now,” Payne said on Sunday, describing conversations with his longtime collaborator, also in attendance. “If...

Alexander Payne teased post-The Holdovers projects to an audience at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Sunday (August 18), providing an update on the Election sequel and saying he wants to make “a car chase movie.”

“Jim Taylor and I are conceiving what the sequel would look like now,” said Payne of the Election sequel, which is in the works at Paramount+. Taylor is a regular collaborator with Payne, including as co-writer on Downsizing and Sideways.

The film will be based on the 2022 sequel novel Tracy Flick Can’t Win by Tom Perrotta, who wrote the first book Election on which...

Alain Delon, the French actor most famous for his roles in the films of New Wave director Jean-Pierre Melville, especially “Le Samourai,” has died. He was 88.

“He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” according to a statement released to the Afp news agency by his family.

In addition to “Le Samourai,” Delon also appeared in Melville’s brilliant heist film “Le Cercle rouge” and “Un Flic.”

Some of his other significant films were Rene Clement’s “Purple Noon”; Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers” and “The Leopard”; Antonioni’s “L’Eclisse”; Jose Giovanni’s “Two Men in Town”; and Joseph Losey’s “Mr. Klein.”

Although he triggered some controversies during the later part of his life due to his public comments on adoption of children by same-sex parents and affinity with far-right politicians, many prominent figures in France and abroad paid...

French acting star Alain Delon, whose many iconic roles included Le Samouraï, Plein Soleil and The Leopard, has died in France at the age of 88.

The actor’s children said in a statement that their father had passed away in the early hours of Sunday, surrounded by his family and beloved Belgian Shepherd Loubo, in his long-time chateau home in the village of Douchy, in the Le Loiret region some 100 miles south of Paris.

Delon’s death marks the passing of one of the last surviving icons of the French cinema scene of the 1960s and 70s, when the country was on an economic roll as it reconstructed in the wake of World War II.

Related: French Pres. Emmanuel Macron Leads Tributes To Alain Delon: “More Than A Star, A Monument”

The star, who was at the peak of this career from the 1960s to the 1980s, fell into acting by chance.

Alain Delon, the dark and dashing leading man from France who starred in some of the greatest European films of the 1960s and ’70s, has died. He was 88.

“Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as (his dog) Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” a statement from the family released to Afp news agency said.

Delon had been suffering from poor health in recent years and had a stroke in 2019.

With a filmography boasting such titles as Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and The Leopard (1963), René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960), Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Eclipse (1962), Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein (1976) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967) and The Red Circle (1970), Delon graced several art house movies now considered classics.

His tense and stoical performances, often as...

Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center’s Sophia Loren: La Signora Di Napoli

Edoardo Ponti’s The Life Ahead; Mario Mattoli’s Poverty And Nobility opposite Totò and Enzo Turco; Alessandro Blasetti’s Too Bad She’s Bad with Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio De Sica; Dino Risi’s The Sign Of Venus (Il Segno Di Venere) with Franca Valeri and Raf Vallone; Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Eleanora Brown, plus De Sica’s 1963 and Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio All’Italiana) with Mastroianni, and The Voyage (Il Viaggio) with Richard Burton; Stanley Donen’s Arabesque with Gregory Peck; Francesco Rosi’s More Than A Miracle (C’era Una Volta) with Omar Sharif; Charlie Chaplin’s A Countess From Hong Kong with Marlon Brando; Ettore Scola’s A Special Day (Una......

French director Olivier Marchal has begun filming new police thriller Bastion 36 for Netflix, which is billed as a contemporary cop drama adapted from Michel Tourscher’s novel Flic Requiem.

Set in Paris, the movie revolves around Antoine Cerda, a senior police officer with the prestigious Investigation and Intervention Brigade, who is transferred to the Anti-Crime Brigade after being sanctioned by the General Inspectorate of the French National Police. The move sees him turn his back on his former comrades and unit, led by the charismatic Sami Belkaïm.

When two officers from his old squad are killed in less than 24 hours and a third goes missing in mysterious circumstances, Cerda embarks on his own investigation. His inquiries will reveal an intense police rivalry and take him on a terrible downward spiral.

The movie is not a sequel but takes the director back to the world of Marchal’s 2004 police thriller Precinct...

Spoiler Alert: The following essay discusses key plot points, including the ending.

Last weekend, I took in “Le Samouraï” for what must have been the sixth or seventh time, relishing the new 4K restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece (now playing at Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles). As I exited the screening, I discreetly eavesdropped on my fellow audience members. Most seemed impressed. A few were still processing what they’d seen: an existential study of a lone killer, told with radically little dialogue. “That wasn’t at all what I expected,” one woman told her friend. “I thought we were going to see some kind of samurai movie.”

It’s a reasonable assumption, given the film’s title, although the 1967 crime classic takes place half a world away, in Paris, almost exactly a century after Japan’s samurai era came to an end. I first saw “Le Samouraï” in the late ’90s,...

Studiocanal will co-produce and is handling international sales on Fred Cavayé’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s epic novel Les Misérables.

Set to shoot at the end of 2024, Les Miserables is produced by Olivier Delbosc’s Curiosa Films, whose notable behind The Taste Of Things, and Richard Grandpierre’s Eskwad, f recent films Like A Son and Spring Blossom.

No cast is yet attached. Studiocanal will release the film in France.

Cavayé’s most recent credits include the World War II-set drama Farewell Mister Haffmann and period comedy This is the Goat! starring Dany Boon which is set for release...

Back in 1992 Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson — who had met the University of Texas in Dallas and were roomies — decided to make a movie. But after spending $10,000 and shooting 13 minutes of the crime caper comedy “Bottle Rocket,” they ran out of money. Eventually, the short and the full script made its way to Oscar-winning writer/director/producer James L. Brooks. It just so happened that Columbia had a deal with Brooks to finance a low-budget film selected by the filmmaker. And in 1996, the feature-length version of “Bottle Rocket” was released with Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson and James Caan. Though the film didn’t set the box office on fire, critics realized Anderson was a new and exciting cinematic voice.

Anderson has made 11 feature films — his latest “Asteroid City” came out earlier this year — and has been nominated seven times for an Oscar including three for screenplay, two for animated features,...

Joel Kinnaman Photo: Lionsgate It’s Christmas in October because John Woo has finally come back to Hollywood. For the first time since 2003’s Paycheck, Woo is in the U.S. with a pistol in each hand and a flock of doves fluttering around him. His latest Silent Night promises...

Joel KinnamanPhoto: Lionsgate

It’s Christmas in October because John Woo has finally come back to Hollywood. For the first time since 2003’s Paycheck, Woo is in the U.S. with a pistol in each hand and a flock of doves fluttering around him. His latest Silent Night promises a...

Jean-Paul Belmondo’s grandson Victor is uncanny in a supporting role to Guillaume de Tonquédec’s uptight novelist, whose return to his provincial home town stirs up memories of his first love

There are a couple of scenes in this French drama where you might almost think that the film-makers have deepfaked the young Jean-Paul Belmondo back on to the screen, and that AI replicas in film – one of the flashpoints of the Hollywood actors’ strike – has already come to pass. Not so fast. The actor we’re watching is his grandson, Victor Belmondo, and in closeup, at certain angles, the resemblance really is uncanny: that nose (though a little less lopsided) and the pillowy lips arranged to smouldering leading-man effect.

Belmondo appears in a supporting role in a tasteful literary adaptation that has impeccable manners, based on a bestselling autobiographical novel by Philippe Besson (dubbed the “French Brokeback Mountain...

Weeks ago, John Woo posted on social media that he was recently in Paris for the production of the English-language remake of his classic Hong Kong action film, The Killer, which starred his Scorsese’s “De Niro,” Chow Yun-Fat. The remake of the same name is set to star Nathalie Emmanuel and Omar Sy. There is no word yet on how much the remake will stay close to the original’s plot. There are also minimal details on the project outside of Woo, the two leads, and the location. However, it is said to be planned for an exclusive release for the streaming service Peacock.

Producer Charles Roven, who is a frequent collaborator with Christopher Nolan, and is currently enjoying the success of their latest outing, Oppenheimer, recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter on a bevy of topics involving his projects and Roven relinquished some details on the John Woo remake.

Pom Klementieff took inspiration from Bruce Lee and Clint Eastwood for her villain in 'Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One'.The 37-year-old star plays assassin Paris in the new action blockbuster as she attempts to kill Tom Cruise's hero Ethan Hunt and was guided by legends of cinema for the part.Speaking to Variety, Pom explained: "I watched movies with Bruce Lee, with Jackie Chan and some French movies as well, because it was not just about the fight and the physicality – it was also the way the character walks."I was inspired by movies with Jean-Paul Belmondo to find a cockiness to the character. And movies with Clint Eastwood, Takeshi Kitano, all these beautiful characters that barely speak but convey so many emotions as well."Pom explained how she spent years training for the stunts performed in the action franchise and had "manifested" a role in the picture.

It’s not surprising that Breathless remains fresh more than 60 years after its Paris premiere in March 1960—if by “fresh” we mean somehow still in sync with contemporary cultural trends and mores. With its too-cool-for-school bevy of film and literary references, Jean-Luc Godard’s masterpiece both foresaw and helped to launch the now-dominant notion of pop-culture obsession as badge of honor.

We may smile at Michel Poiccard’s (Jean-Paul Belmondo) rapt idolization of Humphrey Bogart, for instance, but it’s more knowing grin than disconnected smirk. Then there’s the ooh-la-la chic of Raoul Cotard’s black-and-white cinematography; the simmering yet self-aware dance of seduction enacted with such arch grace by Michel and Jean Seberg’s Patricia Franchini; the casual fatalism that never seems to go out of style, especially when spoken in French and accompanied by swirls of cigarette smoke. As a source of modish pleasure, Breathless retains its appeal to a remarkable degree.

Studiocanal has signed a deal with Metropolitan Filmexport for worldwide rights to the entire film catalog of acclaimed French director Claude Lelouch.

The deal, announced at the Cannes Film Market on Saturday, includes more than 40 films, among them such French classics as A Man and a Woman (1966) — winner of the 1966 Palme d’Or, as well as two Oscars, for best international film and best original screenplay — Live for Life (1967), Love Is a Funny Thing (1969), The Crook (1970), Money Money Money (1972), Happy New Year (1973), Bolero (1981), Itinerary of a Spoilt Child (1988) and Les Misérables (1995).

Studiocanal has been handling French TV rights for the Lelouch catalog for the past seven years. The new deal will give the group exclusive worldwide distribution rights to the director’s vast catalog, as well as SVOD, free-on-demand and AVOD rights in France. Metropolitan will continue to distribute Lelouch’s films in theaters, on video and through transactional video-on-demand (Tvod) in France.

François Truffaut is back with another Hitchcock-influenced adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich murder thriller, with stars Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo as lovers – criminals – fugitives, and partly filmed in a remote French island in the Indian Ocean. It’s a tale of a mail-order bride, larcenous deception, and irrational amor fou run amuck. The things we do for love sometimes obey no logic. Also starring Michel Bouquet.

Mississippi Mermaid

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 123 110 min. / La Sirène du Mississippi / Street Date February 14, 2023 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, Michel Bouquet, Nelly Borgeaud.

Cinematography: Denys Clerval

Production Designer: Claude Pignot

Deneuve dresses: Yves Saint-Laurent

Film Editor: Agnès Guillemot

Original Music: Antoine Duhamel

Screenplay by François Truffaut based upon the novel Waltz into Darkness by William Irish (Cornell Woolrich)

Produced by Marcel Berbert

Directed by François Truffaut

François Truffaut was the least radical of the official New Wave directors.

Above: Italian poster for The Lovemakers. Illustration by Mauro Innocenti.Over the past ten years I’ve surveyed the illustrated likenesses of stars like Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bruno Ganz and Monica Vitti as in memoriams after their passing, so I am happy to say that the occasion of this look at Claudia Cardinale in movie posters is simply that, starting today, the 84-years-young Ms. Cardinale is being fêted with a three-week, 23-film retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.Claudia Cardinale is one of my favorite actors, but while exploring her career for this piece I realized that my affection for her really comes down to one film, albeit one of my all-time favorites: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). The fact that she is the focus of perhaps my favorite single shot in all cinema—Sergio Leone's magnificent crane shot as Cardinale’s Jill...

Italian film legend Gina Lollobrigida, who achieved international stardom during the 1950s and was dubbed “the most beautiful woman in the world” after the title of one of her movies, died in Rome on Monday, her agent said. She was 95.

The agent, Paola Comin, didn’t provide details. Lollobrigida had surgery in September to repair a thigh bone broken in a fall. She returned home and said she had quickly resumed walking.

A drawn portrait of the diva graced a 1954 cover of Time magazine, which likened her to a “goddess” in an article about Italian movie-making. More than a half-century later, Lollobrigida still turned heads with her brown, curly hair and statuesque figure, and preferred to be called an actress instead of the gender-neutral term actor.

Read More: Evel Knievel’s Son Robbie Dies At Age 60 After Pancreatic Cancer Battle

“Lollo,” as she was lovingly nicknamed by Italians, began making...

With its impressive stunt scenes, pimped cars and groomed cops, Netflix’s “Lost Bullet” marks a big departure from the typical French thriller with run-down cops on the verge of depression or retirement.

Sara May, a Quebec-born executive who joined Netflix in 2018, has been a driving force behind a new wave of French action thrillers such as the “Lost Bullet” franchise that have been global hits on the streamer.

Released two weeks ago on the platform, the second opus of “Lost Bullet” currently ranks as the most-watched non-English language movie on Netflix, and it’s also in the top 10 across 80 countries. The movie also tops the charts across 80 territories including France, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Thailand and Jamaica.

Set in Southern France, in Marseille, “Lost Bullet 2” brings back the French cast including Alban Lenoir, Stéfi Celma and Pascale Arbillot. Lenoir (pictured above), who started his career as a stuntman on movies like “Taken,...

When Tom Six's horror freakout "The Human Centipede (First Sequence)" was released in 2009, it was met with much disgust and ballyhoo. The poster boasted that the film was "100 medically accurate," something that no movie poster should ever boast. 

The premise was wild and gross and repelled prudes while attracting seekers of the extreme. A mad scientist named Dr. Josef Heiter (Dieter Laser) -- clearly inspired by Josef Mengele -- kidnaps three hapless tourists and announces his dark plan while they are strapped to gurneys in his basement. Dr. Heiter intends to surgically connect the three people via their alimentary canals. He will connect one person's face to the previous person's anus, and remove tendons in their knees, forcing them to crawl. In so doing, he will create a human centipede. There is no stated reason for his experiment. 

Audiences who saw "The Human Centipede" were appropriately grossed out. The...

Jean Luc-Godard, who died Tuesday at the age of 91, was widely known as the King of the French New Wave. Since coming onto the scene in the 1960s, his seminal films such as “Breathless,” “Masculin, Feminin” and “Pierrot Le Fou,” introduced avante-garde techniques that have been since been replicated by innumerable filmmakers in the following decades.

In addition to a scathing intellectualism and stubborn stance against “the establishment”, the Franco-Swiss director was best known for changing the rules of cinema — his use of long-takes, jump-cuts and actor asides are just a few of the innovative practices he employed in his films that are still used to this day.

Thankfully, Godard left behind dozens of unforgettable films, many of which have been restored on Criterion. Below, check out some of Godard’s best films to celebrate the late director:

‘Pierrot le fou’ Courtesy of Amazon

Godard perfects the Pop Art color...

Jean-Luc Godard spent his career reshaping the everyday language of cinema. From Oscar darlings to the latest entry into the MCU, it’s hard to find a film or television series untouched by the influence and innovations of Godard, who died this week at the age of 91. Just consider the narrative and technical choices he made in his very first film, “Breathless”: Jump cuts, natural lighting, long takes, freeze frames, on-location shooting. All unorthodox at the time, yet now the type of thing you could clock across any given night of programming on HBO or FX.

In 2022, who can’t recognize the jittery look of a handheld camera? Who would be alarmed to see an onscreen character directly addressing the camera? Who’s never seen a movie directed by either Quentin Tarantino or Spike Lee? Whether or not Godard was actually the first person to pay homage to an...

My favorite tracking shot in film history is not a tracking shot. It's a shot of a tracking shot.

The scene in question opens Jean Luc-Godard's "Contempt," and, visually, consists of little more than a movie camera gliding down a dolly track toward a stationary camera, which serves as the audience's Pov. As the camera moves closer into view, we see that it is shooting, at a 90-degree angle square to our perspective, a young woman (Giorgia Moll) scribbling notations in a book. Eventually, the camera rolls to a stop directly in front of our camera, which is now a low-angle shot of the film's cinematographer, Raoul Coutard, who pans his implement 90-degrees before pointing it downward at the audience. The effect is at once startling and amusing. We have, in essence, locked eyes with the filmmaker.

This may not sound terribly thrilling in writing, but factor in a...

The inarguably true cliché about Jean-Luc Godard was that the late filmmaker, who died this week at the age of 91, was a rule-breaker, an artist whose style changed the course of film history by revealing the medium for everything it had already been and pointing to the future of what it could eventually be. Obviously, his body of work has been influential — but that’s an understatement.

And not only for his extensive, time- and media-spanning filmography, ranging from his cucumber-cool debut, Breathless, to the didactic political experiments of the 1960s and 1970s,...

Stubborn and iconoclastic as always, Jean-Luc Godard has passed to another realm–and by his own choice– at age 91. Ever-iconoclastic, impudent and exasperating, forever pushing boundaries but remaining elusive, and an artist in every fiber of his being, Godard always did exactly what he wanted to do; for a few years many followed him ardently, and for lots of us in the 1960s he led the way into a vastly exciting and personal form of cinema. Thereafter he went entirely his own way, losing most of his audience but remaining at the forefront of exploring what cinema is, could be, and, sometimes, what it absolutely shouldn’t be.

The official obituaries and tributes will certainly convey Godard’s importance and influence through the 1960s, the way he helped liberate cinema from its literary and orderly appearance to something far more energized, unexpected, jarring and often exhilarating. Although Godard consumed and...

Jean-Luc Godard passed away on September 13, 2022 at the age of 91. In a vast and prolific career that spanned seven decades Godard never once shied away from confrontation. Godard was a film brat of the highest order, who used his early New Wave films as a playful, somewhat bitter commentary on the insidious infiltration of cinematic images into our minds. His most celebrated film, "Breathless" (1960), takes place in a world where characters have internalized an ineffable sense of "cool" they learned directly from American movies; in one scene, Jean-Paul Belmondo, sporting a fedora and cigarette, spends a moment to look at a headshot of Humphrey Bogart, a photo he seems to regard like a mirror. 

Much hay has been made by talented and insightful essayists over the impact Godard has had on modern filmmaking. He made movies about people who lived in movies. He was of a generation of French filmmakers...

French president Emmanuel Macron has led the tributes to Jean-Luc Godard, after the revered filmmaker died at the age of 91.

News of Godard’s death was first reported by the French newspaper Liberation. It has since been confirmed by his lawyer that the director ended his life by assisted death.

Patrick Jeanneret told Afp that due to being “stricken with ‘multiple incapacitating illnesses’”, Godard “had recourse to legal assistance in Switzerland for a voluntary departure”.

Godard was known for directing a run of radical, medium-changing films throughout the 1960s, including his feature debut Breathless and Alphaville.

Along with contemporaries such as Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and François Truffaut, the Paris-born Godard was a central figure in the Nouvelle Vague, an experimental film movement that emerged in France in the late 1950s.

Several of his films are frequently cited among the best movies ever made.

Alongside a black and white photograph of the “iconoclastic” Godard,...

Jean-Luc Godard, who died Tuesday at 91, was the filmmaker who changed everything. He directed “Breathless,” the 1960 landmark that helped to launch the French New Wave, employing a new, fast, leaping-ahead technique and style — the jump cut — that altered the DNA of how movies were made. In the ’60s, he took his camera out into the streets and into cafés, stores, offices, and apartments, so that a Godard film often seemed like a documentary about fictional characters. He drew many of those characters from Old Hollywood, a world he’d grown up on and remained obsessed with, but one that he always made seem a million miles away, like some black-and-white Garden of Eden the world had fallen from. So even as you were watching Jean-Paul Belmondo play a glamorous hoodlum or Anna Karina play a femme fatale, you knew that you were also seeing an actor toy with the very...

Tributes are pouring in for the legendary French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, who died Tuesday at age 91. The Franco-Swiss director, who helped usher in a new era of cinema with titles like “Breathless” (1960) and “A Woman is a Woman” (1961), was mourned and celebrated across social media by scores of fans and fellow artists.

Martin Scorsese said that the director “re-defined the very idea of what a movie was and where it could go. No one was as daring as Godard.”

“He never made a picture that settled into to any one rhythm or mood or point of view, and his films never lulled you into a dream state. They woke you up. They still do, and they always will,” his statement continued. “It’s difficult to think that he’s gone. But if any artist can be said to have left traces of his own presence in his art,...

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Hollywood and other movie industry representatives are paying tribute to Jean-Luc Godard on social media following the news on Tuesday that the Franco-Swiss legend had died.

A former film critic who wrote for the legendary Cahiers du Cinéma during its heyday of the 1950s, Godard burst onto the scene in 1960 with his debut Breathless, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The Paris-set crime caper, starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, heralded the arrival of cinematic modernism. Using jump cuts, nods to the camera and other meta-fictional devices, it commented on the story as it was unfolding.

Goddard’s career would go on to span half a century, with the filmmaker directing upwards of 70 projects including features, documentaries, shorts and TV. His work was known at various times throughout his long career for everything from its pop-art homages and historical...

The end of a cinematic era is here. Jean-Luc Godard, the powerhouse of modern French cinema and pioneer of the French New Wave, has died at age 91. According to the Hollywood Reporter, French newspaper Liberation was the first to report the news, but no cause of death has been confirmed as of this writing.

Later, Godard's family put out a statement. "There will not be any official ceremony," the filmmaker's family confirmed. "Jean-Luc Godard died peacefully in his home surrounded with his close ones. He will be incinerated."

Critic To Filmmaker

Godard was an inspiration to many, and to me personally, because of how he got his start. The filmmaker originated on the film scene as a critic, having written for Cahiers du Cinema many times in the 1950s before transitioning into filmmaking with a bang in 1960. He premiered his first film, "Breathless," that year at the Berlin Film Festival,...

Jean-Luc Godard broke with the established conventions of French cinema Photo: UniFrance The acclaimed pioneer of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, who made more than 50 films, has died at the age of 91.

Godard's Breathless, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, broke with the established conventions of French cinema in 1960 and helped kickstart a new way of filmmaking, complete with handheld camera work, jump cuts and existential dialogue.

The director participated in one of the Cannes Film Festival’s most dramatic moments during the 1968 student up-risings and workers’ protests throughout France. A sit-in at the main theatre building by protesters including fellow directors Louis Malle and Francois Truffaut resulted in the festival being cancelled.

He continued to experiment in later years using digital technologies with such films as Film Socialisme and Goodbye To Language, a 3D film, involving a married woman and a single man and a dog that weaves...

Jean-Luc Godard, the legendary filmmaker who revolutionized the medium as a leader of the French New Wave of the 1960s, died Tuesday at age 91.

Godard’s partner, Anne-Marie Mieville, confirmed to the Swiss news agency Ats that he died peacefully at his home in the Swiss town of Rolle near Lake Geneva.

French President Emmanuel Macron also confirmed his death on Twitter, calling him a “national treasure” who “invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art.”

Godard burst on the international scene with his debut feature, 1960’s “À bout de souffle” (“Breathless”), which revolutionized cinematic storytelling with its fractured nonlinear narrative about a petty criminal and his girlfriend, improvisational choreography and rapid editing. The film became an international sensation, making a star of its lead actor, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and earning Godard the best director prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

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He became...

French president Emmanuel Macron has led the tributes to Jean-Luc Godard, after the revered filmmaker died at the age of 91.

News of Godard’s death was first reported by the French newspaper Liberation.

Godard was known for directing a run of radical, medium-changing films throughout the 1960s, including his feature debut Breathless and Alphaville.

Along with contemporaries such as Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and François Truffaut, the Paris-born Godard was a central figure in the Nouvelle Vague, an experimental film movement that emerged in France in the late 1950s.

Several of his films are frequently cited among the best movies ever made.

Alongside a black and white photograph of the “iconoclastic” Godard, Macron’s tribute read: “It was like an apparition in French cinema. Then he became a master.

“Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers, had invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art. We have lost a national treasure,...

Jean-Luc Godard, the pioneering French New Wave director who challenged and upended conventional filmmaking methods for over half a century, died today according to multiple reports in the French media. He was 91.

Godard’s celebrity mystique was defined by the image of the enigmatic chain-smoking auteur, adorned in sunglasses while indulging in existential insight, revolutionary politics, and radical ideas about art. But his career never rested on that cartoonish brand.

Though he would remain most famous for his first feature, the 1960 meta-noir “Breathless,” that iconic debut kickstarted a lifetime of ambitious, often confrontational work. His filmography consists of everything from genre deconstructions to political screeds and avant-garde gambles designed to confuse and provoke new avenues for an evolving art form. Through it all, Godard remained a divisive figure whose prolific output embodied — and often interrogated — the cultural and intellectual proclivities of French society and the world at large.

His legacy...

Jean-Luc Godard, the revered filmmaker regarded as a giant of the French New Wave movement, has died at the age of 91.

He was known for directing a run of radical, medium-changing films throughout the 1960s, including Breathless and Alphaville.

News of Godard’s death was reported by the French newspaper Liberation.

Along with contemporaries such as Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and François Truffaut, the Paris-born Godard was a central figure in the Nouvelle Vague, an experimental film movement that emerged in France in the late 1950s.

Several of his films are frequently cited among the best movies ever made.

Godard’s first feature was Breathless, released in 1960, an experimental tribute to American film noir. Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a hoodlum named Michel, and Jean Seberg as his American girlfriend, the film caused a stir with its unusual visual style and editing techniques, immediately announcing Godard as one of cinema’s great innovators.

Critic-turned-filmmaker Godard is known for films including ‘Breathless’ and ‘Contempt’.

Influential French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard has died aged 91, according to a report in French newspaper Liberation.

The publication cites people close to the filmmaker as the source of the news.

Born in Paris in 1930, Godard was a central figure in the French New Wave movement of the late 1950s and 60s. He worked as a critic for then newly-founded French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1952, before making his first fiction short Une femme coquette in 1955.

The filmmaker’s first feature, 1960’s Breathless (French title: A Bout De Souffle) is among...

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Jean-Luc Godard, the brilliant and polemical Franco-Swiss filmmaker whose work revolutionized cinema, has died. He was 91.

Godard’s death was reported by French newspaper Liberation, which didn’t immediately detail a cause of death.

A former film critic who wrote for the legendary Cahiers du Cinéma during its heyday of the 1950s, Godard emerged onto the scene in 1960 with his seminal debut feature, Breathless, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

The Paris-set crime caper, which starred Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, forever changed the course of movies and heralded the arrival of cinematic modernism. Using jump cuts, nods to the camera and other meta-fictional devices, Breathless constantly interrupted and commented on the story as it was happening.

Indeed, Godard’s major contribution to cinema was his idea that a movie was both the story it was telling and the...

Jean-Luc Godard, the father of modern cinema whose impish, combative provocations threw down a gauntlet with which all those who came in his wake must contend, died Tuesday. He was 91.

The director died at his home by assisted suicide in Rolle, Switzerland, where that practice is legal, Godard’s longtime legal adviser Patrick Jeanneret told The New York Times.

Jeanneret added that the filmmaker had “multiple disabling pathologies” and “decided with a great lucidity, as he had all his life, to say, ‘Now, it’s enough.’ “

In a career that began with 1960’s groundbreaking Breathless,...