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I haven't been part
of the distribution system for a long time

and therefore
I am not where you think I still am.

I have lunch at Cordelia's
and we share silence.

I don't have my heart in my mouth anymore.

I don't have my heart in my mouth anymore.

"And even if nothing were as we had hoped,

it wouldn't change our expectations."

Places, everyone!

- We're going to shoot the Nausicaa!
- Get on the Nausicaa, everyone!

Everyone!

Is the camera rolling?

- Are they going to undress?
- Of course.

Cinema is wonderful.

We see women, they wear dresses,
they make movies, we see their asses!

Godard is undoubtedly
the most famous of filmmakers.

His name is not only
associated with his films,

it's blended with cinema.

Do you see my feet in the mirror?

Yes.

- Do you find them pretty?
- Very much so.

And my ankles, do you like them?

Yes.

Do you like my knees too?

Quiet, we're rolling! Quiet!

Odyssey, 701, third!

Action!

With more than 140 films,

to this day he has pursued
an absolute quest for cinema,

an uncompromising quest

made up of shifts, ruptures,
utopia and loneliness.

He has taken every possible path.
He has been everything and its opposite.

Whether you worship him or hate him,

Godard is a legend
and we almost forgot the man.

And yet, behind the legend,
there can only be a man.

GODARD
CINEMA

I'll introduce myself first.
I'm Macha Méril.

Hello.

CHAPTER 1

That's very Godardian.

He liked that
but we weren't looking into the camera.

We were looking above,
like when you're at the cinema.

He said: "You have to look like that".

You know, there's one thing
you can't choose, it's your date of birth.

I was 20 at the time
of the French New Wave.

Are you going with me to Rome?

It was an absolutely essential moment
that changed society and the world.

- Why don't you ever wear a bra?
- Listen, don't talk like that!

Well... I apologize.

You have to go back to that time
when everything was new,

the new cuisine,
the new architecture, the new novel.

All of a sudden, in the cinema,
we were doing things

as contemporary as what painters,
sculptors and architects were doing.

Cinema, which comes from the theatre,
from the novel, a little traditional,

all of a sudden became an art
at the level of others.

That's really Jean-Luc,
that's really Godard.

He is the New Wave after all.

Godard is the heartbeat of the 60s.

It is a catalyst
for the spirit of the times.

If you want to know this first half
of the 60s, you have to go through Godard.

Even if you're a sociologist,
even if you're not a film buff.

If you want to know a little
about what was done,

what was the subject of that time,

the depth, we could say,
of that time,

you have to watch Godard's films.

The Jean-Vigo 1960 prize for feature films

has just been awarded
to Mr. Jean-Luc Godard

for "Breathless".

Do you think movie awards matter?

Yes, because they attract, perhaps,
they draw attention to cinema

to the detriment of other arts
that today I find less important,

or arts that are "out of breath",
whereas cinema is not.

If you don't like the sea,

if you don't like the mountains,

if you don't like the city...

fuck you!

RATED R

I have seen "Breathless"

and I find that much effort is being made
to soil things and people unnecessarily.

He usually tries to shock
middle class people, as usual.

It was disgusting!

I think it's really the cinema
that has shown the truth. Life as it is.

What is a little terrible
is that I know young people

and among them, I find some
among the characters in this film.

It's a film that was made as a reaction
against everything that you didn't do,

almost pathologically or systematically.

You don't do a close-up
with a wide-angle lens. Well, we'll do it.

You don't do a tracking shot by hand.
Alright, we'll do it.

And it corresponded
to a desire to do what...

To show that everything was allowed.

With "Breathless",

Godard immediately became
the emblem of the New Wave

and totally revolutionized cinema.

Rare are the first films
to have had such an impact

and to have marked the history
of the seventh art to such an extent.

It is a break in the history of cinema,
but it is very particular,

because it is not done
on a monumental mode

or on a mode of aesthetic affirmation.

There is something
much more in contraband,

much more risky.

- What's "faire la tête"?
- Doing like this.

There is an art of imperfection,
of casualness,

which is very striking in him.

I find this very, very good.

- He wrote his dialogues every morning?
- Yes, every morning.

When I signed for the film,
I was given only three small pages,

where that just said
that he leaves Marseille,

steals a car

and wants to sleep with the girl again
but she doesn't want to.

And in the end, he dies or he leaves.
And eventually we chose for death.

Cinema can do anything.

There are no rules yet,
you have to find them.

This is what I claim.

There are obviously
those famous jump-cuts,

those shot cuts that he made
because the film was too long

and that he had to shorten.

I'm in love with a girl
with a very nice neck,

very nice breasts...

All of this is done
so that the spectator says to himself:

"Ah yes, I'm at the cinema!
I don't forget that I'm at the cinema.

I don't forget that it's a movie,

that these are characters
and that's not reality."

What's "dégueulasse"?

He will suddenly become
a kind of cinematographic poet,

since it is a question of highlighting
the cinematographic dimension of the scene

rather than dwelling on a plot.

Yes, the subject of Godard's cinema
is cinema.

It is a permanent search
for what is cinema?

What interests him is what cinema can,

what only cinema can.

And that's what also made his genius,
his permanent invention, in the 1960s.

He always wanted to be apart.

He wanted to follow his thought,
only his thought.

Do you feel that in his youth,

there were things that designated your son
to do the kind of films he did?

No, his inheritance on both sides,
of his father and grandfather,

is a fairly intellectual
and at the same time very literary legacy.

It was in the fashionable neighbourhoods
of Paris that Godard was born in 1930.

He grew up between France and Switzerland.

His father, Paul, was a doctor
and his mother, Odile, worked for a bank.

When I wrote "Godard par Godard",

I asked him for a photo of his childhood
and he told me he didn't have any.

So I didn't insist, he didn't have any.

And I wrote in Les Cahiers du Cinéma

an article entitled
"Has Godard ever been a child?"

And I explained that it was impossible
to find a photo of Godard as a child.

Godard said very little
about his childhood.

But this sentence is revealing:

"I remember being told
that I would be a lawyer.

I was very argumentative.

In French-speaking Switzerland, they say:

'What a naughty boy,
he talks back all the time.'"

My father is very unhappy
because there was a rupture.

Because he left,
because he wanted to make films

and that in the family,
it was considered...

perhaps not quite in the family line,

where you study, you become this or that.

But he was considered
as a so-called artist and...

He left for good. That is to say
that he no longer received any money.

It was the call of cinema.

It was a sufficient driving force
to make him leave.

Godard refused his inheritance

and the breakup with his family is severe.

In 1954, his mother
tragically died in an accident.

Godard is 24. His family didn't want him
to attend the funeral.

Well, when I was at the Sorbonne
in propaedeutic, the first year,

little by little
I became interested in cinema.

I discovered film clubs
and the Cinémathèque.

I met at the Latin Quarter film club,

guys like Truffaut,
Rivette, Rohmer, Chabrol...

Truffaut, he looks like he's sixteen
and Godard has all his hair.

It was at the beginning of the 1950s.

On the seats of the Cinémathèque,

thanks to its founder,
the charismatic Henri Langlois,

Godard and his fellow movie fans

established the unusual idea
that cinema was an art in its own right.

What has always struck me
is that the cultured and intelligent class

does not yet accept cinema as an art.

We still see newspapers writing articles

which, in fact, are asking
if cinema is really an art.

There was also in him some sort of anger

that was expressed by something rather
peculiar that we have to speak about.

It's the fact that he stole.

He was kleptomaniac.

He stole when he was a young man,
he stole from his friends.

On these images
that were found very recently,

Godard was 20 years old.

In addition to playing a role in it,
he partly financed Jacques Rivette's film,

thanks to the money
he stole from one of his uncles.

And so there were legends.

Well, he validated them.

He ran off with the takings
of the Cahiers du Cinéma

or he sold his grandfather's books.

Well, little things like that to get by.

It was by becoming a critic
at Les Cahiers du Cinéma

that the young man
prepared his revolution.

When writing in the magazine,

young critics
already feel like filmmakers.

They have an idea in mind
that they will impose on the whole world.

Through his direction,

the author of the film is an artist
who expresses himself personally.

During the 1950s,

they criticized
the classic post-war cinema

and wanted to destroy all "false legends",
as François Truffaut wrote.

No creation without destruction.

At some point
it was also a political posture

and it joined an essential idea
of Godard's aesthetics.

Godard said:

"We don't have the right
to start from harmony.

We must start from chaos

and we must clear harmony from chaos."

"Through my education and training,

I have a taste for paradox
and a spirit of contradiction,".

Godard writes.

This spirit of contradiction
is constantly at work in him

and particularly
in the choice of his second film.

"The new wave is criticized
for only showing people in bed,

so I'm going to show people
who are in politics

and don't have time to go to bed."

I feel I love cinema
less than I did a year ago,

just because I made a movie
and it was popular.

So I wish that my second
will be disliked a lot

and that it will make me want
to do cinema again.

- Now, people trust me completely...
- Does it bother you?

So I hope to disappoint them,
so they won't trust me anymore.

I'd rather work
with people I have to fight against.

Filmed in Geneva in 1960,

"The Little Soldier" tackles a real taboo

the Algerian war.

Godard is provocative.

By directly staging scenes of torture,
the film could not be more contemporary.

It's above all
a film against "Breathless".

Deep down he may already feel
a form of celebrity coming,

and he breaks that right away
with a film that is going to be banned

and which will not be viewable
for several years.

The real subject of "The Little Soldier"

is the barging in of Anna Karina
in Godard's filmmaking.

When he was making Breathless,
he had seen me in an advertising.

He had asked me to come to the office

to do a little something in "Breathless".

What impression did he make on you?

He was a weird, shy man,
with those dark shades.

He scared me a little.

It's not like the others.

What Godard was looking for at that moment
was someone who was a virgin,

not in the strictly sexual sense
but in the cinematic sense.

He wanted his Lilian Gish,
his Ingrid Bergman.

He wanted his muse.

- Where do you want me to stand?
- Anywhere. I don't care.

Do what you want, I'll take pictures.

Here, I'm going to ask you questions
and you will answer me.

- You look scared. Why?
- I'm scared.

I think it's like the Police
were questioning me.

During the screen test, he looked at me,
he circled around me.

Photography is the truth

and cinema is the truth
24 times per second.

He didn't say a word.
I didn't like that at all.

He examined me from top to bottom.

Right now, what are you thinking about?
Are you thinking about me?

Yes.

What do you think of me?

Why don't you answer me?

You really look scared.

One evening, after dinner,
he handed me a card.

He had written: "I love you.

I'll be waiting for you at midnight
at the Café de Paris in Geneva."

And at midnight,
I was there with my suitcase.

I liked him.

What did you provide him? Stability?

He's not as shy now as he used to be.

He used to slam doors.
He never said hello.

- You taught him all that?
- I don't know but I gave him confidence.

The wedding took place in 1961.

He will film Anna in seven films.

In the press, Anna Karina became.

"The bride of the New Wave".

It happens to me very often.

I know what I want to say.

I think before I say it to check
if that's what should be said.

At the moment of saying it,
I'm no longer able to say it.

A great passion,
surely that means something to you.

It would be a shame if it didn't.

Do you know he can laugh out loud
like no one else?

He likes to do things right away.

He never says:
"Tomorrow, I'm going to Rome."

He says: "In five minutes,
I'll be on a plane, I'm going to London".

Ok, we'll do one more. That's it.

Very good, the more we have,
the better it is for me.

Rolling!

"Breathless", anarchy.

"The Little Soldier", confusion.

"A Woman Is a Woman", the musical.

"My Life to Live", emotion.

"The Carabineers", war.

"Contempt", cinema.

"Band of Outsiders", tenderness.

He made an incredible number of films
in a very short time.

He shoots nonstop.

It's a series of movies.

There's no time when you say:
"He's thinking, now he's..."

I don't know.
It seems like he's always on the move.

I don't even see in the history of cinema

who could compare to him
from this point of view.

Speed is very important. The tempo,
we could say the rhythm, is essential.

It's the most important thing about him.

Why do you make so many films?

Why don't you take a break?

Because I think I'd stop if I...

Like the soldiers in the Russian War
who kept marching, and marching.

And they knew that if they laid down,
they wouldn't get back up.

Godard. Second.

The sound was bad the first time,
it's the television.

If none of his films achieved
the same success as "Breathless",

very quickly his unique personality
seduced the cameras.

How are your characters different,

how do they stand out from the others?

I would rather say
that they are normal people,

and it's the people
who can tell the difference.

I like to stand apart
and my characters do too.

All his life, he made films

and he made the legend

of his work and his films, until now.

Sometimes, I hear what he says

and it's clear that he has always loved
creating his own legend.

Where he creates a role like that,
totally unique.

Rolling! Pierrot, 18/22, first!

On "Pierrot le Fou", for example,
in all the interviews, he said:

"I left, I had nothing.

I had my two actors,
we didn't know where we were going."

This is absolutely false.
This was a fully prepared film.

It means that he himself
played the improvising genius.

There was the private Jean Luc,
who was a very funny man,

told lots of jokes
and did a lot of English humour.

And then the public Jean-Luc
with his little hat, dark glasses

and who said sentences.

What is your greatest ambition in life?

Becoming immortal and then die.

And he always unsettled the person

he talked to with a weird phrase,
which he shifted

and blasted the interview.

I'm a painter who does literature,
if you like,

or I do literature, but with paint.

He had a sort of a disconcerting nature
at first, but he amplified that.

All these "enigmatic phrases",

Godard also placed them in his films

by whispering in the ear of his actors.

First of all, we didn't have a script,
we didn't have a screenplay.

I had an earpiece covered by my hair.

All the actors had an earpiece,

and he was directing us
from behind the camera.

He said: "At that moment,

you say to him these famous
philosophical-political phrases etc."

Annie. I am very careful
crossing the streets.

I am very careful crossing the streets.

I think of the accident
before it might happen.

I think of the accident
before it might happen.

Except my life ends here.

Except my life ends here.

Unemployment.

Unemployment.

Illness.

Illness.

Old age.

Old age.

Death, never.

Death, never.

It's terrifying because we're totally
depending on the earpiece.

And we have texts in the earpiece
that are very, very complicated.

No one today is able to know
what tomorrow's city will be like.

Part of the semantic wealth
we had in the past will be lost,

for sure.

So, we were always listening,

with a totally dumbfounded head,
we all had the same expression.

And there, we were kind of robots
directed by an earpiece.

It's not an autobiography,

it's a kind of an unveiling of his being.

He reveals himself, he shows who he is,
and he reveals all of his states of mind.

I dreamed that I was walking alone,
on the edge of a precipice,

on a path where there was only room
for one person.

I remember that there is a line
that I ask my mother

in "Two or Three Things I Know About Her".

My mother was Marina Vlady.
And I said to her...

Mom, what is language?

Language is the house where man lives.

She didn't know, and neither did I,
that she was quoting Heidegger.

So it was always him...

It was his words, it was his personality
that we all expressed.

What did they say in the...
I can't remember.

I was talking about the sailor
and the little girl, right?

Off the set, quotes from philosophers are
of no help to communicate with others.

Jean-Luc had invited me to dinner once

in a bistro
that looked a little like this one.

That's the only time
he invited me to dinner.

I think it was Coutard who said to him:
"You have to invite her to dinner once."

So we had dinner,

we ordered an egg mayonnaise.

We remained quite silent face to face.
We had nothing to say to each other.

That's because he is elsewhere.

He's been somewhere else for a while now.

But maybe he was somewhere else
all the time,

and not quite among us.

I think he has great friends,
people who love him, women who loved him.

But he is pure spirit.

He's a man who is not in the flesh.

Why do you look sad?

Because you speak to me with words
while I look at you with feelings.

I can't have a conversation with you.

You never have ideas, always feelings.

As soon as we were happy,
he tried to harm us.

One would have thought
he was irritated by happiness.

I had met Anna Karina at a time
when she had not said much about Godard,

about their relationship.
A little bit, but not much.

She didn't hide that there had been

very complicated moments
in their private lives,

like suicide attempts, that sort of thing.

The fact that she had had a miscarriage.

She didn't say it all,

but anyway, she said enough for us
to understand that it hadn't been easy

and that she had also made him suffer,
that she had also suffered, that's all...

The most disturbing were
his silences and his absences.

He could keep quiet for several days.

There is nothing to explain.
I don't love you anymore.

Why? You still loved me yesterday.

Yes, very much.

Now it's over. I don't love you anymore.

Regarding Jean-Luc,

I think it was a very important time
for me.

For Jean-Luc, I don't think it's over,

because for those who liked the films
he made with me,

it's something that remains.

What is most important for me

is to understand what's happening to me.

It was when he had just separated
from Anna. He was very unhappy, I think.

Or he was acting as being very unhappy.

And artists, these men, at that level,
they invent their feelings, their...

So, he wrote her letters every day.

There was a friend named Patricia Finaly,
who took the letters...

to Anna, and back.

And me, I was a kind of a copy of Anna.

- Cinema is great!
- We have fun with love scenes.

The hands should be over there.

This film is a special film
because I'm in all the shots.

If not me, there's a piece of me,
a knee or an eye.

Like that, you can with a finger, stroke
his finger.

His wedding ring.

Like that, like that, yes, that's it.

- No, just a finger.
- A finger.

That's right.

Alright, come on, let's do it like this.
Announce it, good God!

A Married Woman, 7/15th, take one!

Godard doesn't look at women
like other filmmakers,

he always maintains a certain distance.

It's a Calvinist film,
it's absolutely and tremendously cold,

but that's what's troubling.

He treated me
like an ornithological plate.

The lab results are positive.

You are about three months pregnant.

In this film, we talk about birth-control
pill when the pill didn't yet exist.

You could find it in Switzerland
and Belgium and cost a fortune.

The scene with the gynaecologist,
the poor thing was a real gynaecologist.

I bombarded him with impossible questions.

"Sir, I have a lover, a husband.
I'm pregnant. Who is the father?"

So, the guy...

And so these were questions
that all women asked themselves.

There is the question
about sexual freedom, it was starting.

We were very careful.

This question, he immediately understood
that it was crucial in the lives of women

and that if we talk about emancipation,
we are only talking about that,

owning our own body.

Is physical pleasure wrong?

Physical pleasure is not wrong,

since it must normally lead
to this conception which is sought.

He was rather misogynistic, if you ask me
about his relationship with women,

I think he didn't like women very much.

He worshipped them, which is worse
because that means he didn't like them.

But that, he understood. He knew
that women were going to change.

He had offered me
"The Lily Of The Valley".

So when I went on vacation
before the shooting,

I told him of an article about women
who prostitute themselves in big cities.

I said to him:
"Did you read the article in L'Obs?"

The newspaper "L'Observateur".

He said no and we talked about it
on the way to the airport.

We saw each other all the time
to prepare "The Lily Of The Valley".

When I came back from vacation,

he said to me, "We won't shoot
"Le Lys dans la vallée"

but "Two or Three Things
I Know About Her"."

And that's how it happened.

She's a girl and we see her in the evening
at home, taking care of her children.

And the next day, she leaves for Paris.
She does a bit of prostitution.

- Don't look at me undressing.
- Why not?

- I don't want you to.
- In two minutes you'll be totally naked.

It's not the same.

We did a screenplay based on a fact

that was happening when we were shooting.

It's happening today.

Godard sets his film
in a rapidly changing Parisian suburb.

Once again, he captured
the spirit of the times

by pointing to what will soon be called

"the consumer society".

"Two or Three Things I Know About Her"
is really communist.

In it there is a communist commitment.
We shot at La Courneuve.

There was really the desire to make
a connection with social struggles,

with the anger that was rising too
in "Two or Three Things I Know About Her".

And then, he becomes much more critical.

There are still a lot of things
around the Vietnam War in the film.

It's not the same Godard.

Everything he experiences
is also projected into art.

The Vietnam War.

Starting with "Pierrot le Fou",

Godard cannot help expressing
in every film

his condemnation of American imperialism.

We campaigned together
against the Vietnam War.

One day, we were in a restaurant

and a big American guy came in
with his cameras and all.

He was over 6ft tall.

And little Jean-Luc threw himself at him
saying: "Peace in Vietnam."

And he was really...

He was a revolutionary.

We were doing demonstrations and all that,
we were right in it.

He was a precious friend to me
and a sort of brotherhood for me, really.

For me.

For him, apparently, it was different
but I didn't understand that until later.

And after we had this very Godardian scene

when he asked me if I would marry him
and I said no.

I was going to Romania to meet a lover.

He said: "Don't answer now.
Answer when you're back."

And the whole time, I thought:
"What happened?"

And that was it.

From the moment I said no,
he stopped talking to me.

In just a few years,
Godard managed to embody

the figure of the "author"
more than any other.

François Truffaut wondered:

"Will Godard soon be more popular
than the Pope,

that is to say just a little less
than the Beatles?"

Godard will soon do everything to leave
this unprecedented place for a filmmaker.

One day, I was eight years old

and Jean-Luc arrived home
with a crate of the Little Red Book

since he had gone to pick it up
at the Chinese Embassy in Paris

which had just opened
thanks to General de Gaulle.

And Jean-Luc, on the day of the opening,
went to get some Little Red Books.

He put them down, then he took one out,
gave it to me and said:

"Here, Christophe,
you'll explain it to your parents."

CHAPTER 2

This is Radio Pekin.

One day in June 1966,

I wrote a short letter to Jean-Luc Godard
addressed to Cahiers du Cinéma.

I told him that I really liked
his last film,

"Masculin Féminin".

I told him that I loved the man
who was behind it, that I loved him.

Yes...

At the beginning of the film,
she's little girl,

and by the end of it
she is still a little girl.

He was proud to have me at his side.

Proud to love, and to be loved
by a young student

and on top of that an actress
for Robert Bresson.

On the landing, there was an envelope
containing a book,

"Jean-Luc persecuted"
by the Swiss writer Ramuz.

As usual, he used books
as a medium for messages.

He changed the title.

"Thanks to Anne,
Jean-Luc is no longer persecuted".

France's most prolific filmmaker

Jean-Luc Godard has just completed
a film called "La Chinoise",

the story of a French student
who reads Mao Tze-tung.

For a long time I had the idea
to make a film

about students,

who are the only people
with whom I feel I have a little affinity.

I feel like an old student, if you will.

I had wanted for a long time
to make a film

about the politicisation
or de-politicisation of students

and to make a film about what I called

"the Robinsons of Marxism-Leninism",
so young people who, from the start,

are influenced by the Red Book
and quotations from Mao Tze-tung.

Revolution is an uprising,
an act of violence

by which one class overthrows another.

I am in philosophy class.

Jean-Luc looked at me tenderly.

"I ask you to tell me everything
you will see and hear at Nanterre."

Apart from a few leaflets I brought back
without having read them,

the few discussions
I tried to take part in

were about Michel Foucault,
Althusser and Lacan,

considered the only great intellectuals
of the time.

At the time when he started "La Chinoise",

it was after discovered
and deciding to make a film

which documented the appearance
of a political current,

the Union of Communist,
Marxist and Leninist Youth,

a new pro-Chinese or Maoist group

very much influenced
by the philosopher Louis Althusser.

So it's a way of using
both fiction and a documentary

to find out how to situate oneself
in the present.

From a strategic point of view,
all enemies must be despised

and from a tactical point of view,
fully take them into account.

His political coming out is "La Chinoise",

it's "La Chinoise" for us.

There is something inexplicable.

You are against capitalism, ok.

You are against
the authoritarian regime...

I have decided...

Of De Gaulle's France

and you take as an alternative

the Cultural Revolution.

It's organised massacres.

So how can we explain that Jean-Luc,

of an incredible sensitivity
about the phenomena of society,

was engulfed in this dogmatism?

We were in the red white blue,

a sentence of Mao lined up
in black letters on the back wall.

"You have to confront vague ideas
with clear images."

That goes for you, too, Coutard.

His political radicalisation,

his increasingly affirmed
political commitment

encouraged him to seek in the history
of the arts, not only of cinema,

in the history of political arts

what thoughts, what artistic experiences

can nourish him in order to reinvent

a political, revolutionary,
communist, Maoist cinema.

I have the impression
that I am only beginning to tell stories.

It's traditional cinema

that's not telling anymore.

Next to "Doctor Zhivago",
I think I tell stories.

He has a certain radicalism

that allows him to perceive things.

All of a sudden with Maoism,
with this structure of explanation,

he has an explanation for the world.

Last day of filming for Jean-Luc Godard
for his film "La Chinoise".

- Shall we use the clapperboard?
- We'll come and call it a wrap.

He is going to hasten a sequence

in which Jean-Pierre Léaud distributes
the Little Red Books to motorists.

It's this desire,
at an intellectual's moment,

to have, in German
we would say a "Heimat",

a homeland.

That's my hope.

I, Romain Goupil, registered
with the Revolutionary Communist Youth,

think that Godard must be condemned
for his film "La Chinoise".

He betrayed Marxism-Leninism.

Secondly,
he does not have the excuse of fiction.

And third, he made activists
look like neurotic cases.

I'm doing this interview,
I say bad things,

really head on,
I'm very young, I am sixteen.

I hated that movie, but anyway,
I still hate "La Chinoise".

Except that I now find...

a kind of madness in that film.

"The Chinese at the embassy hated it.

They told me that I knew nothing
about their country,

their revolution
or the Little Red Book.

They told me that my film
was the work of a reactionary moron

and that if they had the power, they would
forbid me to call it La Chinoise,"

he said in a gloomy voice.

I held back my desire to laugh

because I understood
that his pain was sincere.

"I'm so disappointed" he said.

Today the aesthetics of cinema

has become an aesthetic that must be
called capitalist and American

since 90% of the films
made in the world

are American films.

So, as a...

Filmmaker in the West, who makes films,
our problem is totally contradictory.

We want to make revolutionary films

but we are not
in a revolutionary situation,

even outside of cinema.

And besides, as a filmmaker,

I'm forced to work all day
with people who hate me

and whom I despise.

And yet I'm forced
to practice peaceful coexistence.

All day at the Lido,

I spend my time smiling at people
who aren't even...

who aren't anything,
who shouldn't even exist

or that I would send to prison.

He was a victim
of his Jean-Luc Godard aura.

He suffered from it

and I believe it was very deep.

He suffers from being provocative,

from being a rupture.

But this rupture isolates him
and he suffers from this isolation.

"Let's get married. Everything would be
so much simpler", Jean-Luc said.

"If I propose to you, we'll be considered
engaged, and we'll be left alone."

"Fine, but you have to ask
for my hand for real."

"To whom?"
"To my grandfather."

"To François Mauriac?"

Jean-Luc was cute, so cute.

He had a bouquet of flowers in his hand

that was the spitting image
of Buster Keaton in "Seven Chances".

Jean-Luc was a light, funny,
inventive and tender man,

with whom I never got bored
and who continues to charm me.

My mother told us that our marriage
was announced in Le Figaro.

We were dumbfounded.

As soon as we were in the street

we were surrounded
by several photographers and journalists.

They bombarded us with questions.

Godard wrote:

"I always wanted both at the same time,

to make myself known
and keep a low profile."

He felt less and less in his place.

The cinema, by its organisation
and its production,

was no longer compatible
with his revolutionary convictions.

His anger grows and it's on the screen
that he will express it.

For me, Weekend is the film that says:

"Let's not forget our enemies,
the middle class. They are appalling."

So it's a cry of rage
against middle-class cinema.

Come here! Poor guy! You morons!

Mireille Darc was presumably hired
for this reason,

since she embodied this Lautner,
Audiard cinema that Godard hates.

It's a film that's mean,
that's tough, that's...

We are also evil characters.

But it is very difficult
to tell this story.

As with many of Godard's films,
when you try to recount them,

you don't say much about the experience
you have when you watch them.

It's about a middle-class couple

and they obviously both cheat
on each other.

Each would like for the other to die
over inheritance issues.

The actor is like cattle.

He tells them to go left or right,
to open this door, to do this or that.

He is using us, which is very good because
you are going to see a Godard film.

You are not going to see
such-and-such in a film.

We think we know him at times,

but in the end,
it's very difficult to talk about him

because I don't know, we know nothing.

We think we feel him at times and then,
two minutes later, he's so different

that you feel you were wrong
about your impressions.

One of the fun facts that was remembered
a lot about "Weekend"

is that Godard did
what was presented at the time,

as the longest tracking shot
in the history of cinema.

I believe it was 300 yards long.

Godard had to rent all the tracking rails
that were available

from equipment rental companies in France.

And so, no filmmaker in France
could do a tracking shot

since he had rented all the rails.

And hastening, of course,
to cut it in editing.

So, there was no need

to put 300 yards of rails,

if it was to cut
this tracking shot in editing

but Godard is a great punk.

He is unruly, undisciplined,

he will never walk in single file.

Incidentally, there are very often
some queues in his movies

and it's always the sign of oppression
to take his place in the queue.

That is his critical sense of society.

He sees the consumer society,
the so-called escape society.

His sui generis hatred...
his hatred is always there.

My bag!

My Hermes bag!

"We are driven by an infernal logic
that leads us straight to destruction."

Another sentence contradicting that,
which I have always held onto:

"If we, cinema people,
are still claiming the title of artist,

we must not forget that it implies
the strict respect of this rule:

there is no true morality that does not
involve a fierce resistance to tyranny."

As if he had once again entered into
resonance with society,

Godard will very quickly
have the opportunity

to put into practice this "fierce
resistance to tyranny" apart from cinema.

FEBRUARY 1968

In Paris, there was a lot of unrest.

On February 9, the president
of the Cinémathèque, Henri Langlois,

was replaced by government decision.

François Truffaut's telegram
said in essence:

"Come home immediately, we need you".

INTEGRITY, FREEDOM OF SPEECH

NO COPS IN FILMS

Things went very quickly
with Jean-Luc, Truffaut and Rivette.

I was part of the demonstration
between Jean-Luc and François Truffaut,

impressed and dizzy
by their determination.

I was hanging on a fence, a little above,

to observe.

Jean-Pierre Léaud read a statement.

He thought he was at the Palais Bourbon
during the French Revolution.

He was delivering this and that...

The police charged for a moment,
so I intervened.

The shock was violent.

The police responded with their clubs
and the fight became general brawl.

The Gaullist government
did not measure what it had done

but to attack Langlois
was to attack a guiding light,

a spiritual father.

And it worked.
It was a victorious mobilisation.

On May 6th,

strikes and demonstrations broke out
in many universities in France.

This is the first time we have seen this.
We are occupying the Sorbonne.

It's the final fight...

"How beautiful this youth is",
Jean-Luc euphorically said.

He filmed the arrival of the demonstration
with a Beaulieu 16mm camera.

Strangers recognised him
and shouted at him:

"Godard, are you with us?"

Then began the races to escape the police

during which I found out how scared I was.

Jean-Luc wasn't afraid of anything.

The violence of the police
was driving him mad

and the rudeness of his insults
surprised many.

He looked like a boxer
in an American film,

a samurai in a Japanese film.

The Cannes Film Festival
had started on May 10th,

and the idea of interrupting it
was beginning to spread.

It's a matter of showing,
with a delay of a week and a half,

the solidarity of the film industry

to the student and workers movements
that are taking place in France.

The only practical way to do
that is to immediately stop...

I'm talking about solidarity
with the students and the workers

and you're talking to me
about tracking shots and close-ups.

You morons!

THE REVOLUTION

Cinema 6, scene one, take one.

Since his return from Cannes,
something sad emerged from him.

Where had his enthusiasm
of the first couple of weeks of May gone?

For me, what happened in May

really opened my eyes.

As a director, we were,

if we accept to be that,
we were only a cultural product

or required as such by the State,
tolerated by...

Tolerated by the imperialist ideology.

There are various forms of imperialism
and that's one of them.

Cultural imperialism.

Second clapperboard,
Cinema 6, scene three, take one.

So what is the solution?

The solution is to stop making films

for imperialism.

If you work for French TV
stop making films for them

or just make movies that right now
they can't broadcast.

Just keep shooting, that's what I'll do.

This is a major rupture for Godard.

He goes in search of a cinema
that doesn't exist yet,

a cinema that will be made differently

and that will be at the service
of social struggles.

The constant awareness for Godard

that the legacy of Langlois
is "cinema is an art"

and it is therefore
a different activity from politics.

And if you want to make political cinema,

you have to invent how to create
a meeting point between the two.

It was in this state of mind
that in June 1968,

Godard began filming what he considered
to be his last "bourgeois film".

Under the impulse of Mick Jagger,
the Stones sought, improvised.

The movie was called "One Plus One".

Jean-Luc found himself obliged
to film with them. He was devastated.

"I didn't want to.

I had completely forgotten
that damn contract I signed."

I played Eve Democracy,

a young woman harassed
by a television crew

who wants to interview her at all costs.

When I asked him what it would be about,

he replied with this sentence
that I had already heard him say:

"Democracy means slowly dying."

Jean-Luc, from a certain point on,
did not believe in democracy.

All that is not going to work

and we are going more and more
towards the abyss.

Jean-Luc wants to get nowhere.

He wants to describe his despair
in front of a despairing world.

At the end of the movie,
they executed Eve Democracy.

Jean-Luc himself came into the shot
and sprayed me with haemoglobin.

They put me bleeding
on the board of a cinema crane

which rose towards the sky.

Last image of the film.

The break with his past work
had to be complete

and with no possible return.

He wrote: "Middle-class people
created a world in its own image.

Comrades, let's destroy this image!"

Once I mentioned, we were together,

"Breathless" or "Pierrot le Fou"...

I thought I was going to lose him.

"Are you talking to me about this shit?
I'd like all these films to disappear.

Why are there still the negatives?
Why they didn't burn the negatives?"

He had a score to settle regarding a time

when he thought he made
aesthetic concessions,

he said they were political concessions,
but, that's nonsense.

He thought he made concessions
in the story, in the screenplay.

He fought against himself.

At his request,

we went to meet Dany Cohn-Bendit
at his home in Frankfurt.

They had planned to make
a political western together,

but they talked so much,
constantly interrupting each other

that almost nothing came
of this first meeting.

Yes, that's absolutely true.
It's a crazy and incomprehensible story.

I don't know how I had the idea
of making a western with Godard.

It was an idea,
it was a childhood fantasy.

He had found an Italian producer.

So we met in Rome
where we collectively discussed

the film we were going to make.

Well, then, this is a general assembly.
The camera is available to everyone.

Godard tried to make
"political films politically",

and began by abolishing
the very notion of author.

So he had to do with a painful
and complicated contradiction

that is how to continue making films
without giving up

on the requirement of cinema as art,

orienting it in favour of the current
revolutionary movements

and without being the boss on the set.

Hold a general meeting because doing it
was still the best way to talk about it.

Jean-Luc was a bit lost in this.
He was listening.

For us, yes, it was a game
and for him, it was serious.

This shooting will become a real chaos

of confrontation
among the political currents.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit
at the time, was an anarchist

and refused
any professionalization of politics.

Gian Maria Volonté who was close
to a somewhat heterodox current

of the Italian Communist Party.

And Godard, who brought
all his young Maoist friends from Paris.

Cinematographically, nothing was created.

Hence the call for backup
of Jean-Pierre Gorin.

It's the Little Red Book...

He is very ambitious,
he wants to make movies.

He has direct militant experience
that Godard does not have.

So it's a privileged dialogue
because Gorin has a cockiness

that will never allow him
to be told off by authority.

And that is what Godard is looking for.

Therefore, he is looking for people
who have no problem

dismissing him in a certain way,

since that is what he wanted to do
with himself

and with his own previous movies.

And the arrival of Gorin
on the set of "East Wind",

will originate the utopia
of founding a group, Dziga Vertov,

of no longer signing the film
under the name of Godard,

but of having a common flag.

The idea being that Vertov
must embody an additional degree

of political and aesthetic radicalism.

Jean-Luc Godard was an author,

he's still is and he tries to fight
not to be an author and it's difficult.

So you have to stop filming me now,
in close-up, just because I'm speaking

you also have to film
the people who are listening,

because we're trying to work as a group

and working as a group is political work.

We stopped talking
about cinema in general.

We know that a film
is an ideological product

and that it is part of a struggle.

And we are on a certain side,
the revolutionary faction,

it says absolutely everything
about our future activity.

STRUGGLE

But Dziga Vertov... this time, he told me.

He sets up the editing table
and said: "Romain!"

We voted to find out if the shot
was going to be edited or not.

We voted by majority

and so if the majority agreed,
I tossed the shot.

So it's the complete opposite of cinema,
the opposite of Jean-Luc.

Jean-Luc is a poet.

Fortunately, each time he avoided
the pitfalls of political films.

He passed by and made works of it.

But there was a distressing black period,
but now who cares,

it serves as testimony, that's all.

We were doing a press conference

because all of us were out on parole.

The financing of these films
of the Dziga Vertov Group

is only possible
thanks to the notoriety of Godard,

that is to say by raising orders
of television channels in Europe,

in the United States.

So he plays on the ambiguity
that his author name

gives him the material means to live
and make the group live

and produce films
that must dissolve his author name

in the collective Dziga Vertov Group.

What... what are we in, there?

Well... we were...
in a context of suppression.

He has to go...

to the end of the militant madness.

They make films...
It's not even for 100 people.

It's for no one.

Some leaflets, "Cinétracts" of 1968
to the films of Gorin,

they got into a myth of militant cinema

that is like the militant newspapers
that no one can read.

And obviously, each time, the sponsors
see a Maoist political film coming

and more often than not,
give up broadcasting it.

The films of the Dziga Vertov Group

will remain almost invisible
for several decades.

It was when he was filming and creating
that I liked Jean-Luc the most.

I whispered to him
that I was in love with a filmmaker,

not an activist,
coupled with a political commissar.

A large part of my problems with Jean-Luc
date from the arrival of Gorin.

Gorin brought the worst to Jean-Luc,

dragging him towards a cinema
which, profoundly, was not his.

He created a void around him.

I left for this

because Gorin ended up living
with him instead of me.

Our final separation came
after more than a year, almost two.

It was extremely painful
for him and for me.

The unfortunate end of our story
became commonplace and private.

I ceased to be
a privileged witness of the time.

I won't write it.

Godard completely dissolved
in the collective.

He chose to disappear.

What happens during the 1970s?

This is a question
that comes up regularly.

Out of sight,

after the disintegration
of revolutionary utopias,

he will find the way to a reinvention

by questioning everything,
starting with himself.

What's wrong with television
is that we're all alone.

And yet, we're still three on television,

the transmitter, the receiver
and the TV set,

and we are still at -0.

We are before the birth of television.

CHAPTER 3

Seven years later,
Godard will settle in Switzerland,

in the village of Rolle,
close to where he grew up.

He is one of the very first
to try to put video tools

at the service of cinema.

After collective hopes,

comes the time of technological autarky.

We always want to do that.

At times I want to do this or that,
but not always that.

I do research, I've never hidden it.

I should be registered with the CNRS
but they always refused my application.

I should be paid by Mr. Chevènement
to make movies,

he should allocate a budget, I make a film
and I'll refund him every year.

However, in cinema,
research is prohibited.

It's funny because the viewer
is entitled to the pursuit of pleasure,

but the research itself...
I never denied it.

That's why I'd rather say I'm a scientist
and we laugh about it.

Godard has always been fascinated
by technique,

he has always liked to invent,
to discover...

The technical discovery is something that,
with his complicity with Raoul Coutard,

gave rather incredible
moments of filmmaking.

And from the moment Godard
will settle alone in Rolle in 1977,

he will build in his house a real studio

where he will be able to satisfy

his fantasy of making movies by himself.

It's a small thing,

but it's one of the most technologically
advanced places

in the film industry.

It's really a cutting-edge tool
that Godard has made for himself

and he will be able
to bring together images, closer,

like some kind of wizard
in his laboratory.

You see, that's it,
it's just that simple...

It's simple because there are
no more things, only machines.

Things, machine, see? Me, thing, well,
it's my relationship with a machine.

And then man-woman, thing-machine.

"Numéro Deux"
opens around this strange boss.

As he says: "I'm a boss and my workers
are the machines

and I'm in the middle of these machines

and it's my way of working now."

It's really a moment when Godard allows
himself for the first time in a long time

to say "I"

and this is what allows him
to start again,

rid of everything that had prevented him
from saying "I" for so long.

The "I" is anti-militant.

There is a guy who was called Jean-Luc,
then everyone gave him another name.

People said "Godard".

However, it was written "Jean-Luc"
and people read "Godard".

Who are the scammers?

The one who says "Jean-Luc"?
Or those who read "Godard"?

To get there, as often,
Godard burned all his boats.

On June 9th 1971, he was the victim
of a serious motorcycle accident in Paris.

"It was my civil war, my prison.

Someone was in the Vietnam War.
I was in hospital."

He almost died.

Multiple fractures of the pelvis,

his skin torn from the entire lower body.

He spent a week in a coma
at the Laennec hospital

with multiple operations,
pins in all directions.

Some pretty serious consequences.

And Godard was on the verge of letting go.

The accident of 1971 is the obvious,
almost cruel, physical sign

of Godard's political failure.

And it's also, in a way, the beginning
of a rebirth, a rebirth but as a couple.

And that, obviously, is something
that allows Godard to accept a new life

and to bear in a certain way
his loneliness as a creator.

It's the first time in his life
that Godard really needs someone.

Godard met Anne-Marie Miéville
just before his accident.

She took care of him
throughout his recovery.

Like him, she is Franco-Swiss.

Like him, she is politicised.

She manages a bookstore in Paris
that defends the Palestinian cause.

Do you have the impression
at times that cinema is...

an art or an institution,
all kinds of things at the same time,

something to respect
when you're working or not?

Godard has always said
that he was very impressed right away

by the intelligence and the rigor

of Anne-Marie Miéville.

Anne-Marie Miéville
truly becomes Godard's interlocutor.

It's the only time that Godard manages
not only with a woman,

but with someone to talk,

to introduce a dialogue
like that over the long term.

I think it somewhat bothers you
to talk about Godard?

- Not at all.
- Not at all?

No, not at all. If we know how to leave it
in his place, no, not at all.

I don't have to hide that in fact

I went to a kind of school.

I did both set photography and editing

as well as co-screenwriter
and co-director.

They say that he is a very demanding
director, very difficult on a film set.

Is that your opinion too?

Yes and no.

Once recovered in 1973,
Godard fled, accompanied by Anne-Marie.

He left the capital
to make himself scarce.

He headed for Grenoble

where he settled for three years
in a housing project in the new town.

It is a real exile that Godard

imposes on himself,
but it is an exile rather desired.

Both to flee and to be reborn.

Godard has really left everything behind.

He founded a new company in Grenoble,
Sonimage, his first audio-visual lab.

In Grenoble, we were called Sonimage.

We will do otherwise
with sounds and images.

We are going to make soup
with sounds and images

but we are going to try
to find other soup recipes.

A prisoner of war. Or a political exile.

A violent fire.

A story, a long story, Scheherazade.

I remember one day
we had a shooting problem,

we had a directing problem.

And at one point, Jean-Luc said:

If it was Renoir, what would he do?

Renoir would put the camera there,

a 50 mm lens at eye level

and have people enter from the right side
and exit on the left side.

If it was Hitchcock, what would he do?

If it was Lang, what would he do?"

And then he said:

"What would be
the opposite of all that?"

It's not easy to find
the opposite of all that.

But we went on a lot like that.

In fact, he always dreamed
of almost unattainable things.

He asked for them
as if it were a metaphysical horizon.

Maybe in a perfect world

things won't be called.

We will experience them.

And we will not be there to just say:
"We will experience them".

The last person who made
cinematic language evolve was Godard.

But on a mixing, editing table level.

Now with audiovisual,
with the video recorder,

Godard is going to be
the Griffith of cinema.

All morphogenesis comes from a conflict.

- What's morphogenesis?
- Any formation of forms.

He kept abreast of all the stuff
that came out in every company worldwide.

Camera, video companies...
He subscribed to everything.

Sometimes he drove us nuts.

He was really terrible at soldering
but he wanted to solder cables.

He did a lot of terrible stuff

but he wanted to do it all the time.

A whiting.

Well no, it's the capitalist system.

A light bulb.

No, a dream.

I was sixteen and a half, I was pregnant.
I was expecting a child.

- What do you call old age?
- Retirement. Old people's retirement.

If you make pictures of friends,
why wouldn't that make you satisfied?

Yes, I happened to make a film
about my friends.

We put in the usual fertilizer,
which is quite a lot.

Well, we've harvested

about a quarter of the grass
we're used to harvest.

The 1970s were marked by two major series

produced with Anne-Marie Miéville
for television.

Godard sets out
to meet his contemporaries,

whom he listens to and films at eye level.

He holds up a mirror to all those
with whom he shares the present time.

It's clear that I exist, but it would be
dark because it will be at night.

Even at night, it will be clear to you
that you exist.

Yes.

Are there things, can you give me
examples of obscure things in your life?

The night.

What moves me of Godard
is a form of generosity

in relation to the weakest, often,

or to the victims of History.

Godard was never
on the side of the powerful.

He has always been on the side of those
who are somewhat the losers in History.

It was not easy
to be close to him and Anne-Marie.

It's not easy at all.

Because it was necessary to provide them
a contradiction, all the time.

And so, after a while,

it was a soccer game every day.

Does the fact that I make images
instead of having children

prevent me from being a human being?

When you manage to get close to him,

you realise all the burdens
he carries with him,

his badly healed wounds.

And then at the same time,

when I think of him,

I think back
to his extraordinary childish smile.

Sometimes he has incredible smiles.

Or sometimes when you manage
to make him laugh, which is not easy,

then all of a sudden, he laughs
and it's a real laugh.

I loved his laughter.

Everything could have gone on like this,

but Godard never quite seems to be
where he wants to be.

In 1977, he leaves Grenoble
for the shores of Lake Geneva.

It's in Rolle, land of his childhood,
that a new desire will arise in him.

CHAPTER 4

I called him not too long ago

to let him know I was thinking of him
and to find out how he was doing.

And I was happy to hear him.
He was adorable.

I told him that I was probably
going to come to Lausanne

and that I would be glad to see him.

There was a long silence and then he said:

"No, no, I'd rather not, Nathalie."

I totally respected that.

This morning
I learned to feed the animals.

There was a calf with a hole in its back
and everything it ate came out from there.

For me, it's people.

What do you mean?

They have a hole in their mouth

and there are words coming out.

People often talk about the great director

and they often say things
that are hard to swallow, a little harsh

but I...

But he was always incredibly kind to me

and I was always very happy
when I worked with him.

I don't really know what
"Every Man For Himself" means

but I like the title.

"This is the second time that I feel like
I have my life ahead of me,

my second life in cinema
or the third, rather.

The first was when I wasn't making movies,
when I was going around it.

The second was from Breathless

up to the years 1968-1970.

And then there was the ebb or flow.
I don't know how to call it.

And the third is now."

That's "Every Man For Himself".

"Every Man For Himself"
Jean-Luc and life.

"Every Man For Himself"...

Like he said,

this is his second "first film".

He was very unsure of himself

when he said he wanted
to do a fiction again, he wanted to work.

And he actually thought
it wasn't going to happen.

It's because I don't have the strength
to laze around that I make films.

For no other reason.

This is the truest of all that I can say
about my business.

Undeniably, Dutronc is him,
he plays Paul Godard.

He says: "I am a finished man
but likely to start all over again".

At that time, he returned with the means
of television, with the means of video,

with the means of the electronic image,

to ways of writing
totally forgotten in cinema,

like slow motion, saccades, freeze frames

which suddenly gives an image

that is not cinematic,

but an image
of, I don't know, something else.

It's probably paint.

Besides, I remember, there was the critic
at the time, Pascal Bonitzer, who said:

"Every Man For Himself"
is not the "pen camera",

it's the "brush camera".

Each sequence was a small film.

When you prepare a film,
you strip the scenes

and then you organize the working plan
according to all the constraints.

I quickly understood that it was not going
to work like that at all,

that we had to take a sheet

and mark as much as possible what we were
going to try to do during the week.

And very quickly, the team only had
what was going to happen the next day,

if that.

As always with Godard, when there is
a date for the first day of shooting,

and in general,
we don't shoot the first day.

Then the second day we don't shoot,
neither the third day.

This is what happened in any case
for "Every Man For Himself".

But is it your program or mine?
Will you answer me, damn it?

- Listen, Denise.
- Is he going to answer?

- Is this fascist going to answer?
- Take it easy.

The fight, the rehearsals...

And there is a scene...

It's the elephant scene.

Nathalie Baye, the actress,
is cycling in a forest.

Her bicycle has a flat
and an elephant comes out of the forest,

takes her with its trunk.

It takes Nathalie Baye
and it leaves the shot.

There, we see, we will go and look
with the mahout.

And then the mahout speaks to Nathalie
to give her gestures.

Can you imagine Natalie Baye?

We shoot the scene. Rolling.

And he says: "Yeah, that's perfect.
It won't be in the movie."

But it will.
He must not work against the film.

At the Cannes screening
for "Every Man For Himself"

I was with Jean-Luc.

And when we left the theatre,
there were people who called him a genius.

But there were people
who were horrible to him

and called him names.

And I will always remember,
I took his hand like that.

I was angry

and very, very emotional.

I found it very, very hard.

The film was poorly received

and, against all odds,
the movie is a success.

Basically, it's a theory film
for the general public.

It's a lesson of avant-garde filmmakers

who joins the cinema
of the general public,

which is actually rare
in the history of cinema.

There he heavily insists about the fact
that he now works as a painter.

And the cinema does not recover
from the passage of Jean-Luc Godard

as the painting does not recover
from the passage of Picasso.

In fact, Godard's problem,
like all great artists,

is to make cinema, his art,
do something for which it is not made.

Films are made. The images are made there.

They are made when you can't see them.

The invisible, it's this,
it's what we don't see.

The incredible, it's this.

The incredible is what we do not see.

And cinema shows the incredible.

A new period is beginning for Godard.

He continues his visual
and narrative research,

but reintegrates
the classical production system.

It was in the early 80s
that he shot some of his major works

such as "Passion", with Hanna Schygulla.

You cannot fail to remember

everything you experienced with Godard

since he is so unique.

And that is really the real situation,
that I listen to this music?

He told me: "There will be a love scene

but I don't want it to be a love scene.

I would like Jerzy to take your head

and shake your head.

It can also sometimes be brutal.

Or else very caressing."

I said to myself, we say that love

makes you "lose your head",

maybe that's it.

It may be a very poetic transcription.

He assumes
that it's better not to eat your fill

and not to understand everything,

especially that.

Yes, he does.

Yes, because as soon as you think
you've understood, a window closes.

I understand...

I still don't understand you very well.

Maybe it's not so useful to understand...

It's enough to stand.

A worker is fired by her boss.

She falls in love with a foreigner
who is shooting a film in the region.

But the boss' wife

also falls in love with the foreigner

and he can't find a story for his film,

when there are so many around him.

He always used to complain.

No, no, nobody was...

Nobody was ever really with his film.

While everyone was really with his film.

So there were like childish wounds
that you could feel...

in him, but that you couldn't really...

Anyway, I would never have talked
to him about that.

But he loves pain too, I think.

And he likes to feel it, I think.
And he likes to give it too.

We are in an operation

where, we make the film, they are paid,
we are together,

we are a family, we eat together.

The film is over,
no one asks about me anymore.

Does anyone want to know
how I'm doing anymore?

Maybe vaguely about the film a week later,
if the editing goes well.

But no one cares.

This is how he functions, hyper bad faith.

And so, he is in a kind of isolation
that he creates himself,

which means that the only relationships
he has is when he's filming.

I know what I need.
It's because I'm all alone

and I don't see anyone.

And that I only see the cinema
to meet someone quickly.

If I'm in a waiting room at the station
and I'm all alone,

if a girl and a boy come in like that
and I want to talk to them.

The only way, a direct way, right now,

is hiring them for a film.

It's true. This way I can talk to them.
Otherwise, I can't.

I can't say: "Who is your mother?
Who do you love? Who is your boss?"

And besides, there is total silence
in the waiting rooms.

Hello, hello? I can't hear you.

Yes! Now I can hear you again.

It's interesting because the first film
I made was with Godard.

I was 14 years old.

- What class are you in?
- Year 9.

Are you a good student?

Well, I'm average.

What do you want to do later?

I want to make movies,
well, I want to be an actress.

The set of "Detective"
was a very intense experience.

For me, to communicate with him
was not a problem

but for someone it was impossible.

I saw it, I saw how difficult it was
for him and for them in return.

I saw how things were going
with Bruno Nuytten, it wasn't easy.

Bruno Nuytten was director of photography.

We have rarely seen many technicians
invest in production, I'm sorry.

We have rarely seen many technicians
inventing equipment.

Nagra was not invented
by a sound engineer.

You didn't invent Arriflex.

We have had a funny relationship
with you for five weeks.

Yes, and I also have
a funny relationship with you.

I know.

And you have a funny relationship
with the sun.

With Johnny, for example,
he was incredibly considerate and kind.

Anyway, as Johnny was very calm,
very happy to shoot with Godard.

He was calm and who was watching all this

because for him,
it was like a science fiction thing.

Godard, even by himself,
apart from his films,

is one of the people
who doesn't leave anyone indifferent.

It's either you hate him or you love him.

And in general, when you hate him,
I hated him sometimes during the shooting,

then he smiles at you
and you start loving him.

If you're a bit humble and intelligent,
I think,

you accept that you don't know anything
and that you always have to search.

He puts himself in the position
of researcher and student.

That's why somehow he got along well
with Johnny,

with me,
with people who weren't in a state to say

"I know everything,
I'm a great actor, a great actress",

a great actress",

he hated that.

He liked people
who weren't actually fully actors yet,

not fully cinematographers,
not fully this or that.

He agreed to bear his name again,

to once again become for the world
Jean-Luc Godard, the great filmmaker.

His aura keeps growing.

He also exposes himself in his own films,

giving himself the role of filmmakers
in full doubt or of a mad inventor.

His characters oscillate
between burlesque and tragic

which make porous the border
between the reality of a man

and the fiction that this man

has made of his life.

People who don't have
all the cultural references

that may be necessary
to understand your films.

- We only talked about references.
- You did, not me.

Personally,
I grasp your film instinctively,

but I lack
a whole background of references

that people around you have.

You are lacking nothing, aren't you?

- I asked you something.
- Tell me what you lack.

In the film, I mean.

Jean-Luc Godard,
considered a revolutionary of cinema...

It is also the beginning
of international recognition.

In 1983 at the age of 53,

he received the Golden Lion in Venice
for his film "First Name: Carmen".

He made quite shocking films.

I know "First Name: Carmen",

sexuality and all were very...
And he got a pie in the face.

A pie in the face from someone
who didn't appreciate

the nudity of the Virgin Mary
in his film "Hail Mary".

Where does Jean-Luc Godard stand today?

He spoke in the media,
he went on talk shows

where they only talked about anarchists

and crazy stuff.

Philippe, any text written by Mistic
has this force,

this violence in relation to the body.

And that's how the newspaper...
That's how it is.

Every audience member who enters
says the title of the film,

and says "Hail Mary".

At that point, he gets a ticket,
he gives the money and...

I'd rather talk to Vitez because...

I understand.

Otherwise, I'm going to say bad things
about you that it's not worth it.

For no reason.

Absolutely, for no reason.

- Thank you, goodbye.
- Goodbye.

- Did they put foundation on you?
- No, I have it naturally.

It's my beard.

There was something
with Marguerite Duras too, right?

Listen Jean-Luc, this disability you have,
maybe that's it.

Maybe that's what you have to endure.

They argued a little,
but at the same time, there was love.

It was complicated, it was weird.

He can be mean,
but there is still a lot of love.

I am not a human being.

I am being alive
and I follow myself as a human being.

Thank you, Isabelle.

Of course, thanks to the professionals
in the profession, as I said.

The "professionals in the profession".

And thank you, since I spoke of shadow
and light, to the invisible.

Thanks to Gaumont's switchboard operator.

There was this thing
where they always gave

the César d'honneur
to someone who was going to die.

I think he spread the word
that he was sick.

I really think so,

to poke fun at them a little.

You, the eternal marginal of cinema,
right?

Yes, you know, the margin
is what holds the pages together.

I think Godard is really an introvert.

Like he has this particular social thing.

I think people like that
are constantly creating,

otherwise they go nuts.

Anyone?

Is there anyone?

And...

There would be somewhere.

And here is the light.

Here are the soldiers. Here are
the bosses. Here are the children.

And here is the light. Here is the joy.

Here is the war. Here is the angel.
Here is fear.

And here is light.

Here is the universal wound.
Here is the night.

Here is the Virgin.
Here is grace and here is light.

And here is the light
and here is the light.

And here is the mist.

And here is the adventure.
And here is the fiction.

And here is the real.

And here is the documentary.
And here is the movement.

And here is the cinema.

And here is the picture.

And here is the sound.
And here is the cinema.

Here is the cinema. Here is the cinema.

Godard during his first period
did not talk about his childhood

or of childhood.

At this moment "JLG/JLG" arrives
and I see the photo

of Godard as a child.

The story of the photo

is as if, all of a sudden,
he was trying to understand

who he was and where he came from.

It usually starts like that,

death is coming.

And then we start to mourn.

And then we start to mourn.

But I did the opposite. First I mourned.

First I mourned.

But death did not come.

But death did not come.

That's undoubtedly why I had that somewhat
devastated look in the photo.

Which did not come
from a pair of slaps or a sprain.

No. I was already in mourning for myself,
my one and only companion.

I was already in mourning for myself,
my one and only companion.

I thought it looked like the picture
of the little boy from the Warsaw ghetto.

The difference between Godard,
a child in his rich environment,

and the little boy of the Warsaw ghetto
is seminal.

His father is French
and his mother is French,

but they were rather
on the side of Pétain.

Well, Godard says that they were
more on the side of collaborators.

There is some shame
even if he has nothing to do with it.

He will end up saying it:

"Yes I was very protected

and that's why I started
to take an interest in history.

That's why I looked for documents.

When I was a boy, I saw, knew nothing,
nothing was explained to me."

This return to his past

became the beating heart
of a vast undertaking

that Godard initiated
at the end of the 1980s,

"Histoire(s) du Cinéma".

He says to himself:

"I can tell my story

if I articulate it with the history
of cinema and the History."

The history of cinema.

The Gulag Archipelago.

In the 8 episodes of this large amount
of images and sounds,

Godard stages himself
as a demiurge creator.

His ambition is to make History visible

and, thanks to editing,
to transform the visible into knowledge.

You don't have to tell history,
you have to see it, you have to show it.

Telling history is literature,
it's a screenplay, and so on.

He said: "That's bad cinema.

I have stories, but I don't tell them,
I show them."

It really is an art of collage.

He asked many friends and collaborators

to bring him their most damaged tapes,

tapes that had lost their colour.

When they asked me
and I brought DVDs,

he found them too neat,
too clean, too good.

"Don't you have tapes
whose colour would be lost?

That you had recorded from television?"

If past history is to be told,
it must be told with the ruins.

So, for him, the ruins of cinema
are excerpts, fragments.

That's what's left of the movies.
It's the memory he has of it.

Only cinema can be legitimate

for telling a story
made up of nothing but ruins.

For me, "Histoire(s) du Cinéma"
is one of the major works of the century.

And maybe we have said enough about
the amount of work that it represents.

I don't know if there are many works,

even in the other arts,
that have had this importance.

To compose this total work,

Godard used fragments
from 495 films and 148 books,

to which he added newsreels,
photographs and paintings.

The work spreads over ten years.

The last episode of "Histoire(s)
du Cinéma" was completed in 1998,

almost a century after
the invention of cinema.

What is cinema? Nothing
What does it want? Everything.

What can it do? Something.

Then Godard
will gradually disappear again.

To put the work forward,
the man withdraws.

Comes the time of mystery
shrouded in melancholy,

the time of enigma,
the time of the hermit of Rolle.

At over 80 years-old,

he parted with his archives,
his machines, his books,

his film collections.

Once again, he wipes
the slate clean of his past,

as if he were still trying to lighten up
and start over again.

And even if nothing
was to be as we had hoped,

it wouldn't change our expectations.

The expectations
would remain a necessary utopia.

Later too, the expectations
would flare many times over

stifled by the stronger enemy.

They would constantly awake

and the domain of expectations
would be larger than our time.

They would extend to all continents.

And even if nothing
was to be as we had hoped

it wouldn't change our expectations.