Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of
four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a
doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a
preeminent family of Swiss bankers. During World War II Godard became a
naturalized citizen of Switzerland and attended school in Nyons,
Switzerland. His parents divorced in 1948, at which time he returned
to Paris to attend the Lycée Rohmer. In 1949 he studied at the Sorbonne
to prepare for a degree in ethnology. However, it was during this time
that he began attending with
François Truffaut,
Jacques Rivette, and
Éric Rohmer.
In 1950 Godard, with Rivette and Rohmer, founded "Gazette du cinéma",
which published five issues between May and November. He wrote a number
of articles for the journal, often using the pseudonym "Hans Lucas".
After Godard worked on and financed two films by Rivette and Rohmer,
Godard's family cut off their financial support in 1951, and he
resorted to a Bohemian lifestyle that included stealing food and money
when necessary. In January 1952 he began writing film criticism for
"Les cahiers du cinéma". Later that year he traveled to North and South
America with his father and attempted to make his first film (of which
only a tracking shot from a car was ever accomplished).
In 1953 he returned to Paris briefly before securing a job as a
construction worker on a dam project in Switzerland. With the money
from the job, he made a short film in 1954 about the building of the
dam called Opération 'Béton' (1958). Later that year his mother was killed in a
motor scooter accident in Switzerland. In 1956 Godard began writing
again for "Les cahiers du cinéma" as well as for the journal "Arts". In
1957 Godard worked as the press attache for "Artistes Associés", and
made his first French film, Alle Jungen heißen Patrick (1959).
In 1958 he shot Monolog für zwei (1958), his homage to
Jean Cocteau. Later that year he took
unused footage of a flood in Paris shot by Truffaut and edited it into
a film called Eine Geschichte des Wassers (1961), which was an homage to
Mack Sennett. In 1959 he worked with
Truffaut on the weekly publication "Temps de Paris". Godard wrote a
gossip column for the journal, but also spent much time writing
scenarios for films and a body of critical writings which placed him
firmly in the forefront of the "nouvelle vague" aesthetic, precursing
the French New Wave.
It was also in that year Godard began work on
Außer Atem (1960). In 1960 he married
Anna Karina in Switzerland. In April and May
he shot Der kleine Soldat (1963) in
Geneva and was preparing the film for a fall release in Paris. However,
French censors banned it due to its references to the Algerian war, and
it was not shown until 1963. In March 1960
Außer Atem (1960)
premiered in Paris. It was hugely successful both with the film critics
and at the box office, and became a landmark film in the French New
Wave with its references to American cinema, its jagged editing and
overall romantic/cinephilia approach to filmmaking. The film propelled
the popularity of male lead
Jean-Paul Belmondo with European
audiences.
In 1961 Godard shot
Eine Frau ist eine Frau (1961),
his first film using color widescreen stock. Later that year he
participated in the collective effort to remake the film
Die sieben Todsünden (1962),
which was heralded as an important project in artistic collaboration.
In 1962 Godard shot
Die Geschichte der Nana S. (1962)
in Paris, his first commercial success since "Breathless". Later
that year he shot a segment entitled "Le Nouveau Monde" for the
collective film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963),
another important work in the history of collaborative
multiple-authored art.
In 1963 Godard completed a film in homage to
Jean Vigo entitled
Die Karabinieri (1963), which was
a resounding failure with the public and stirred furious controversy
with film critics. Also that year he worked on a couple of collective
films:
Die Frauen sind an allem schuld (1964)
(from which Godard's sequence was later cut) and
Paris gesehen von... (1965). In 1964
Godard and his wife Anna Karina formed their own production company,
Anouchka Films. They shot a film called
Eine verheiratete Frau (1964),
which censors forced them to re-edit due to a topless sunbathing scene
shot by Jacques Rozier. The censors also
made Godard change the title to "Une femme marié" so as to not give the
impression that this "scandalous" woman was the typical French wife.
Later in the year, two French television programs were produced in
devotion to Godard's work.
In the spring of 1965 Godard shot
Alphaville (1965)
in Paris; in the summer he shot
Elf Uhr nachts (1965) in Paris and
the south of France. Shortly thereafter he and Anna Karina separated.
Following their divorce, Godard shot
Made in USA (1966), "Deux ou
trois choses que je sais d'elle (1966)", "L'amour en l'an 2000" (1966)
(a sequel to "Alphaville" shot as a sketch for the collective film
"L'amour travers les ages" (1966)).
In 1967 Godard shot
Die Chinesin (1967) in Paris with
Anne Wiazemsky, who was the granddaughter
of French novelist François Mauriac.
During the making of the film Godard and Wiazemsky were married in
Paris. Later in the year he was prevented from traveling to North
Vietnam for the shooting of a sequence for the collective film
Fern von Vietnam (1967). He
instead shot the sequence in Paris, entitled "Camera-Oeil". Also during
1967 Godard participated (as the only Frenchman) on an Italian
collective film called
Liebe und Zorn (1969).
In 1968 Godard was commissioned by French television to make
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1969). However,
television producers were so outraged by the product Godard produced
that they refused to show it. In May of that year
Henri Langlois was fired by the head of
the French Jean-Pierre Gorin to form
the Dziga-Vertov group, infuriating Godard. He became increasingly
concerned with socialist solutions to an idealist cinema, especially in
providing the proletariat with the means of production and
distribution. Along with other militantly political filmmakers in the
Dziga-Vertov group, Godard published a series of 'Ciné-Tracts'
outlining these viewpoints. In the summer of 1968 Godard traveled to
New York City and Berkeley, California, to shoot the film "One American
Movie", which was never completed. In September he made a trip to
Canada to start another film called "Communication(s)", which also went
unfinished, and then made a visit to Cuba before returning to France.
In 1969 Godard traveled to England, where he made the film
British Sounds (1970) for BBC
Weekend Television, but the network later refused to show it. In the
late spring he traveled with the Dziga-Vertov group to Prague to
secretly shoot the film "Pravda". Later that year he shot
Kämpfe in Italien (1971) ("Struggle
for Italy") for Italian television. It was never shown, either.
In 1970 Godard traveled to Lebanon to shoot a film for the Palestinian
Liberation Organization entitled "Jusque à la victoire" (1970) ("Until
Victory"). Later that year he traveled to dozens of American
universities trying to raise money for the film. In spite of his
efforts, it was never released.
