An agitator of the New Wave, he dynamited the codes of cinema with decidedly innovative films,‘Panting a Hail who can (life): French-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard passed away on Tuesday at the age of 91, taking with him a piece of 7th art history.
With his death a chapter in the history of cinema closes. He leaves behind some unforgettable shots: Bardot naked on a bed, whispering “Do you like my buttocks?” (Contempt), Belmondo, with his face stained blue, covered in dynamite (Pierrot the fou), Jean Seberg and her New York Herald Tribune sold at auction on the Champs-Élysées (Panting)…
For many filmmakers (Martin Scorsese, Takeshi Kitano, Agnès Varda, Leos Carax), through his freedom, his liberation from forms, Godard had a great influence, as the Blow Up program explained a few months ago. So much so that Quentin Tarantino baptized his production company “Bande à Part”, the title of a Godard film released in 1964. Here are some winks from these filmmakers to Godard.
“Breathless” (1960) / “Good for Nothing” (1960)
Japanese thriller written and directed by Yoshishige Yoshida released a few months later Panting, Good for nothing pays homage to the final scene with Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard’s classic. The framing is similar, with the camera following a character staggering down an empty street.
“A Woman is a Woman” (1961) / “Before Sunrise” (1995)
Jean-Claude Brialy and Anna Karina form in A woman is a woman a couple who love each other and destroy each other with the help of novel covers. Three decades later, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy fall in love on a train using the same trick.
“The contempt” (1963) / “The things of life” (1969)
Within Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard films a letter of rupture in the foreground. Six years later, Claude Sautet films a similar scene in Life things.
“Band Apart” (1964) / “A Band Apart” (1994)
fascinated by keeping to himself of Godard, Quentin Tarantino named his production company after this film. This name, for the American director, is supposed to mark his independence of character and style from other filmmakers. An underappreciated tribute from Godard, who had fallen at France Inter in 2017: “Tarantino named his production company after one of my films [Bande à part]. He would have done better to give me the money.”
“Bande a Part” (1964) / “Pulp Fiction” (1994)
The famous dance of Claude Brasseur, Anna Karina and Sami Frey in keeping to himself inspired the equally famous dance of Uma Thurman and John Travolta from pulp fiction by Quentin Tarantino.
“Bande à Part” (1964) / “The Dreamers” (2003) / Faces Villages (2017)
Another famous sequence keeping to himself: an express visit to the Louvre Museum. The scene will be repeated in two other films: The dreamers by Bernardo Bertolucci and towns of faces by Agnès Varda and JR.
“A Married Woman” (1964) / “Boy Meets Girl” (1984)
Leos Carax, who began, like Godard, as a critic of cinema notebooksslipped several references to the Franco-Swiss director in his films, and in particular in his first, boy meets girl.
“Pierrot le Fou” (1965) / “Jugatsu” (1990)
Pierrot the fou inspired a scene jugatsu, the second film directed by Takeshi Kitano. We follow a young man whose baseball coach is threatened by a yakuza and who decides to go with a friend to the island of Okinawa. Within Pierrot the fouthe character played by Belmondo also flees the capital to take refuge in the green after embezzling with gangsters.
“Two or Three Things I Know About Her” (1966) / “Taxi Driver” (1976)
The close-up of a cup of coffee in Two or three things I know about her notably inspired an equally hypnotic close-up of a glass of aspirin in Taxi driver by Martin Scorsese.
“The Chinese” (1967) / “Greetings” (1968)
Brian de Palma, before making pastiches of Alfred Hitchcock, was inspired by Jean-Luc Godard in one of his first films, Cheers.
In this little-known film from the director of ScarfaceRobert de Niro reads a political pamphlet in front of the camera, like Jean-Pierre Léaud reading the little red book of Mao in The Chinese.
Source: BFM TV
