Dandy Cat

Jean-Luc Godard, Enfant Terrible of Modern French Cinema, Dies at 91 ↗

I’ve been trying to make this website a generally more upbeat and happier place these days to combat the cesspool of several other internet destinations, i.e., social media sites, but I feel this deserves a mention.

By Jordan Mintzer:

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

Godard resorted to assisted suicide Tuesday in Switzerland, a family spokesperson told Agence France-Presse.

“Jean-Luc Godard died peacefully at home, surrounded by loved ones,” his wife, filmmaker Anne-Marie Mieville, and producers said in a statement. He will be cremated and there will be no official ceremony, they said.

I saw his revolutionary and still exciting film, Breathless,¹ when I was in my 20s—a great age for a film lover to experience it. I was awestruck by the brash confidence and who-gives-a-damn attitude with which it was made. Decades after it was released, I still found myself thinking, Wait, you can do that in a movie?

And he made it when he was only 29! By that age, I’d finished film school but could only dream of being that good.

I’ve yet to see enough of his other work, but I’ll be rectifying that soon.

As sad as this news is, it did inspire this amazing Onion headline: “Jean-Luc Godard Dies At End Of Life In Uncharacteristically Linear Narrative Choice”.