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.