26 Fresh Jean-Luc Godard Movies

Like Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or The Godfather, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Breathless is a milestone in our cinematic history, one of those movies that vastly broadened what filmmakers could express and dream. Breathless arrived in 1960 riding the crest of the French New Wave, a rebellious fountainhead of avant-garde creativity that featured auteur directors hammering apart norms, both filmmaking and societal. Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a Humphrey Bogart-idolizing crook on the run with his American flame (Jean Seberg), Breathless was pioneering in its brash visuals, fragmentary editing (including jump cuts and long takes), and narrative flexibility with all its personal and philosophical diversions.

Godard had a legendary run in the 1960s, directing 15 films up to 1968. Many are Certified Fresh classics, including the industry-skewering Contempt, romantic drama Masculine-Feminine, heist film Band of Outsiders, the no-special effects sci-fi Alphaville, and Pierrot le fou, Godard’s sort of alternate take on Breathless, reuniting him with Belmondo and one of seven feature collaborations with Anna Karina.

Godard’s 1967 apocalyptic road film Weekend infamously ends with an “End of Cinema” title card, declaring his renouncement of commercial work. The mood was reflective of the May 1968 strikes and revolutions that would reshape contemporary France. 1969’s Joy of Learning, shot before and after the civil unrest, would be banned from theaters.

For the rest of his career, Godard’s films would become increasingly militant and stridently experimental, with modern critical interest resurging in the early 2000s with In Praise of Love. Freed of whatever tenuous interest he had in narrative convention, Godard investigated new ways of communication in cinema, with the best of this late period seen in the 3D film Goodbye to Language and his final work, The Image Book.