Jean-Luc Godard
Born in 1930 in Paris, the son of a doctor and a banker's daughter, he had his elementary and high school education in Nyon, Switzerland, and in Paris, then enrolled at the Sorbonne, ostensibly to study ethnology. During his university days he developed a passionate devotion to the cinema, spending endless hours at Left Bank cinema clubs and at the Cinémathèque, where in 1950 he met André Bazin, François Truffaut,
Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and
Claude Chabrol, with whom he would later form the nucleus of the French New Wave. Godard began contributing articles and film criticism for La gazette du cinéma, then Cahiers du cinéma, initially using the pseudonym Hans Lucas, the Teutonic form of Jean-Luc. Also in 1950 Godard helped finance, and appeared in, an experimental film by Rivette, Quadrille, in which four people are seen around a table staring at each other without saying a word.
Note: This profile was written in or before 2003.
Jean-Luc Godard Facts
Selected Filmography
Alphaville |
Contempt |
Pierrot Le Fou |
Breathless |
Aria |
Hail Mary |
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