French-Swiss Director Jean-Luc Godard Dies at Age 91

Godard was one of the most influential film directors and was often credited with revolutionizing cinema.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a small group of French filmmakers turned the cinema world on its head. They called themselves the Nouvelle Vague — or New Wave — and they broke all the established rules of filmmaking.

Jean-Luc Godard, the French-Swiss director who was a key figure in the Nouvelle Vague, the film-making movement that revolutionised cinema in the late 1950s and 60s, has died aged 91. 

Born in Paris on December 3, 1930, Godard moved to Switzerland with his family at age 4. For much of his youth he lived on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva, where his father, a physician, ran a clinic. He returned to Paris after the war, to complete his baccalaureate. 

He studied at the University of Paris and planned to pursue a career in anthropology. Although he never completed his degree, his interest in ethnology informed his filmmaking style, as he would use documentary film techniques to create what became called "cinema verité."

His interest in films blossomed in 1950, when he joined the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin. There he met Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut, who would also become influential members of the Nouvelle Vague. Initially though, his interest in films was purely as a critic. He wrote for the publication Cahiers du Cinéma.

It wasn't until 1954 that he was inspired to make his first short film, while working as a laborer on the Grand Dixence dam in Switzerland. With a borrowed camera, he shot Opération Béton (1954; Operation Concrete). The construction company bought the film and used it for publicity purposes. 

The French president Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “We’ve lost a national treasure, the eye of a genius”. He said Godard was a “master” of cinema – “the most iconoclastic of the Nouvelle Vague”.