At the age of twenty, before starting to make films, Jean-Luc Godard studied ethnology and wrote about cinema (mainly between 1950 and 1960) in a variety of magazines, notably Les Cahiers du Cinéma, acquiring a basic training at the Cinémathèque Française through the programmes chosen by Henri Langlois. From 1954 onwards (with Opération béton, his first short film), he began to complete his critical work in the field, since writing can also be done with a camera. Thus, Jean-Luc Godard's films refer to the history of cinema, sometimes adopting a cinematic genre (the musical for Une femme est une femme in 1961 and science fiction for Alphaville in 1965, for example), becoming pretexts for an aesthetic taking the cinema as its subject-object. Also noticeable in his early films are the particular attention paid to the sound-picture editing and a plastic approach to the image (colours, landscapes, close-ups, etc.). This dual activity as a critic and film maker was a characteristic feature of the Nouvelle Vague, shared by Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and François Truffaut. "Film making hasn't changed my life much since I was already making films when I was a critic and if I had to work as a critic again, it would still be a way for me of starting to make films again." [1]

Already in A bout de souffle (1960), Jean-Luc Godard was trying his hand at different cinematic styles, sometimes coming close in his direction to "dream factory" cinema (American cinema which was a reference for him at the time), without ever really falling into it, even when the resources of a major production such as in Mépris (1963, with Brigitte Bardot and Fritz Lang) might have allowed it. For, before May 1968 and his "mao years" [2], his cinema was a committed cinema attempting to transmit the reality of the world rather than flee it: in the same year as A bout de souffle, he made Le Petit Soldat about the war in Algeria, followed by Vivre sa vie (1962) about prostitution. After Pierrot le fou (1965) and the "Karina years" [3], he devoted three films to analyzing the consumer society: Masculin Féminin, Made in USA and Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1966).

It was in 1967 that Jean-Luc Godard's cinema really became political, or in other words a tool for a Marxist-style ideology. Starting with La Chinoise (1967), which examined the French attitude to Maoism and announced May 1968, and his meeting with the activist Jean-Pierre Gorin in 1968, images became the revolutionary method to communicate an awareness of the failures of our system and the urgent need for change. Since he was no longer addressing cinema-goers but was trying to convince a popular audience, Jean-Luc Godard turned his attention to the "small screen" which freed him from cinema's production requirements and constraints. In 1968, Le Gai Savoir thus began a series of films commissioned by foreign television companies and signed by the group Dziga Vertov (Jean-Pierre Gorin, Jean-Henri Roger, Paul Burron and Gérard Martin), from the name of the Soviet master of "cinema-vérité". Reacting against the idea of the author so strongly espoused by all the film makers in the Nouvelle Vague, Jean-Luc Godard hid his name behind that of the group. Mixing fiction and documentary to produce "materialist fiction" [4], he used a teaching style adapted to the various capitalist countries, making theoretical films during this period at the risk of falling into didacticism, for example One plus one (1968) for the black American cause, Luttes en Italie (1969) with Italian television, Vladimir et Rosa with German television and Jusqu'à la victoire (1970) about the Palestinian revolution. Applying Marxist economic thinking to the cinema, the Dziga Vertov group developed an examination of productive relationships: "As Marxists, we believe that it is production which should control distribution and consumption, and that the revolution should control the economy." [5]

The last two films co-signed with Jean-Pierre Gorin, Tout va bien (1972) which shows the hidden side of production in factories and in the media (radio, advertising) and Letter to Jane (1972) which provides an hour-long analysis of a press photograph from Vietnam, brought this collaboration, which they considered a failure, to a close and led Jean-Luc Godard back to France. They posed however two questions which underlay the productions to come: the relationships involved in production and the meaning of the image.

Two and a half years of convalescence after a motorcycle accident, during which Jean-Luc Godard met Anne-Marie Miéville, led to a new orientation. The first film that they made together, Ici et ailleurs, was emblematic of a shift from Marxist ideology towards a consciousness more sensitive to social realities (they re-edited the film with images of French families watching television), from cinema to video and from Paris to Grenoble where they set up the production company Sonimage. After meeting Anne-Marie Miéville, who became his partner, he succeeded in doing what he already hoped to do in 1968: not "making political films" but "filming politically", combining experience of the day-to-day with theory. Thus, Numéro Deux (1975) dealt with the question of the couple and sexual differences, while Comment ça va (1976) posed the problem of the relationship between political commitment (trade unionism) and commitment in day-to-day life. These films, which represent a transition between the "mao years" and the "video years" [6], led Jean-Luc Godard to work for television once again.

Six fois deux / Sur et sous la communication (1976) and France / tour / détour / deux / enfants are perfect illustrations of the balance achieved between transmitting a dissident ideology regarding the system in place and addressing an individual viewer so that he/she felt concerned. In the series France / tour / détour / deux / enfants in particular, the philosophical message became inseparable from the plastic aspect of the image and a metaphorical mode of expression.

This choice defined the orientation which Jean-Luc Godard followed in the 1980s: giving greater importance to beauty, he now wanted to arouse emotion in the spectator. In 1979, he left Grenoble for Rolle (Switzerland) where he set up a sound studio, making music a vital lyrical element for his cinema, best shown by Prénom Carmen in 1983. He made Scénario de Sauve qui peut (la vie) on video before the film Sauve qui peut la vie (1979), and then Scénario du film Passion on video after Passion (1982), and Petites notes à propos du film Je vous salue Marie (1983) before Je vous salue Marie (1985). Whereas video had up to then been a tool for editing or specifically for television, it now became a way of writing in images which was complementary to the film or even an autonomous medium (Lettre à Freddy Buache, 1981). "Video, using it like someone from the cinema and using cinema like someone from television, is like making a type of television which does not exist and a type of cinema which does not exist any more." [7] Video is a means of watching the film being made, but it is also, because of its simultaneous dimension and its rawer materiality, a way of representing the work in a wider sense.

In 1985, Détective brought Jean-Luc Godard back to film making and directing actors (Johnny Hallyday, Nathalie Baye and Claude Brasseur), to "normal cinema" as he himself said, and determined the orientation which he is still following today: alternating between full-length, commercially distributed films like Détective, with Soigne ta droite (1987), Nouvelle Vague (1990, with Alain Delon), Hélas pour moi (with Gérard Depardieu) and For Ever Mozart (1996), and video works, mainly commissioned (Puissance de la parole in 1988, Le Rapport Darty in 1989) or in the form of essays (Grandeur et décadence d'un petit commerce de cinéma and Soft and Hard in 1986).

Linking these two types of creation, the video project Histoire(s) du cinéma, made over a period of ten years (1987-1998), proposed yet another definition of the concept of a body of work, atypical and new in the history of cinema, the result of fifty years of passion for the cinema.

Marie Anne Lanavère

[1] Jean-Luc Godard, in an interview published in Les Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris, number 138 (special Nouvelle Vague), December 1962; reprinted in Godard par Godard, les années Karina, Paris, éditions de l'Etoile - Cahiers du Cinéma, 1985.
[2] Term taken from the title of the book Godard par Godard, des années mao aux années 80, Paris, éditions de l'Etoile - Cahiers du Cinéma, 1985.
[3] Term taken from the title of the book Godard par Godard, les années Karina, op. cit.
[4] Jean-Luc Godard, in an interview published in Politique Hebdo, Paris, number 26, 27th April 1972; reprinted in Godard par Godard, des années mao aux années 80, op. cit.
[5] Interview with the Dziga Vertov group published in Cinéma 70, Paris, number 151, December 1970; reprinted in Godard par Godard, des années mao aux années 80, op. cit.
[6] Term taken from the title of the chapter "Les années vidéo (1975 à 1980)" in the book Godard par Godard, des années mao aux années 80, op. cit.
[7] Jean-Luc Godard, in an interview published in Le Monde, Paris, 30th March 1980; reprinted in Godard par Godard, des années mao aux années 80, op. cit.