Photography By Luc Delahaye

There’s a line in Jean-Luc Godard’s 2001 Eloge D’amour (In Praise of Love) that sums up the director’s take on film nicely: “Things are right in front of us, why make them up?” Despite Godard’s infamous disregard for scripts, it seems unlikely that the line, spoken by a character who is also a director, is meaningless. Which is always the rub with Godard. What did he mean by that? Was it a reference or something new? Can there be new things in film?
     Was the New Wave really new? Technically, sure. Godard, for one, employed jump cuts, crossed-over audio, and hand-held cameras in Breathless, shaking up the film establishment and translating the youthful malaise of the 1960s into celluloid. Of course the Situationists would say he just stole their ideas, diluted them, and turned them into movies.
     As a critic himself, Godard probably knew that they would, although the criticism is not entirely fair. Yes, Godard is referential in his work, as were many Situationists. He also focuses on themes of alienation, tends to work without a script, edits based on gut instinct and feeling without regard to linear storytelling, and layers soundtracks over one another to obscure dialog or create new sounds. Still, Godard’s work stands as something entirely his own, even with all of its references to the work of others.