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Film history is long and complicated but not without some undeniable turning points, moments after which everything changed.
Theres December 28, 1895, when the Lumiere brothers staged the first commercial-movie screening.
Godard was just 29 when he madeBreathless, but in a sense, it was a long time coming.
To the chagrin of his wealthy family, hed been obsessed with movies as a youth.
But he was the most stylistically radical from the start.
And at the end.
He died this week at the age of 91.
Here are a few with which to get started, but consider them also an invitation to explore further.
And that was the next thing.
A Woman Is a Woman(1961)
How do you follow a film likeBreathless?
Godard provided not one answer but many.
He made movies that knew they were movies for audiences that understood how movies worked but they also workedasmovies.
Godard rarely leaves his heroines side, and yet she keeps her mysteries to herself through the end.
Some conditions developed as the collaboration progressed, like the casting of Brigitte Bardot for her sex appeal.
That lingering nudity isnt the only moment extended to an uncomfortable extreme.
(Yes, thats confusing.)
Its an Orwell-influenced vision of a possible future ruled by an iron fist by unfeeling machines.
Maybe Alphaville was closer than anyone imagined.
(The controversy around his 1985 filmHail Maryis a story unto itself.
Godards penultimate film was even more restless in its experimentation.
The experience sometimes feels like one eye rebelling against the other.
It twists the language of movies to create something that had never been seen before.
That was his speciality.
