“Forgotten Hollywood”- Godfather of New Wave Cinema…
Manny P. here… 
“`Jean-Luc Godard was a film director, screenwriter, and movie critic. He pushed cinematic boundaries and inspired iconoclastic directors decades after his 1960s heyday, including Martin Scorcese and Quentin Tarantino.
“`Godard rose to prominence as a pioneer of the 1960s French New Wave film movement and his efforts revolutionized cinema, as he experimented with sound, narrative, continuity and camerawork. The impact to this new approach would be felt in Hollywood with the downfall of the longstanding Hayes Code that enforced Puritan standards to the content of productions for over three decades.
“`In the 1950s, he met critic André Bazin and future directors François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette. Godard began writing for film magazines, including Bazin’s Cahiers du Cinema. He revered Otto Preminger, Howard Hawks and Humphrey Bogart.
“`Gradually, Godard began criticizing mainstream French cinema’s convention over innovation and experimentation. In response, he and like-minded critics began to make their own films, challenging the conventions of traditional Hollywood. Godard first received global acclaim for his 1960 feature Breathless and helped to establish the New Wave movement. He broke with convention and kick-started a new way of filmmaking, with handheld camera work, jump cuts and existential dialogue.
“`Godard went on to make a string of seminal films in the 1960s at a prolific rate. His career can be distinguishably divided into two phases; one where he made conventional movies with unconventional techniques and the other when he made political flicks. He directed films filled with Leftist, anti-war politics. After the 1980s, Godard was back creating traditional films.
“`Godard’s approach and the French New Wave complemented each other, perfectly. A subtle playfulness of content and form made his films unique. New Wave is based on auteur theory in which the director is like an author and the camera his pen. His genius, with its unconventional approach to sex, violence, anti-war politics and explorations of the counter-culture, introduced new techniques in film-making. Early proponents of auteur theory in Hollywood included Alfred Hitchcock and Ida Lupino (when she started directing movies).
“`Jean-Luc Goddard was ninety-one.
Until next time> “never forget”
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