R.I.P. Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard has died at the age of 91. The New York Times obituary has a pretty good rundown of his remarkable life and movies.

I was exposed to his work primarily in college film studies in the 1990s: Breathless, Le Mépris, Pierrot le fou—his early classics.

What I remember the most is that I found the films, well, rather slow and hard to get into. Their jumble of scenes and cinematic rule-breaking made the watching experiences very start-stop (which was the point).

But, in the end, they cast a certain spell, it was undeniable.

They left you with a certain feeling, that you couldn’t put into words (although you’d certainly try in term papers).

And that has been a lifelong inspiration.

Delerue’s score to Le Mépris (you’ll recognize it) is, of course, in the pantheon:

And I love Antoine Duhumel’s score for Pierrot le fou:

I’ve never even seen the entire Weekend, but the famous “traffic jam” one-shot is amazing—and darkly hysterical:

So farewell to one of the giants.