Jean Luc Godard

Greatest film director of the 20th century or greatest film director of all time?

Discuss.

He’s clearly one of the most non-controversial and universally agreed upon of directors. I can’t even imagine what there might be to discuss, so we may as well just end the thread now and join in a chorus of We Are the World.

uh-oh…

Greatest French director of all time. But really, shouldn’t we have a deeper conversation than that?

Let’s crack open a chardonnay and discuss the implications of what cinephilia means as a philosophical stance, a question he’s been interested in since the beginning, and most intriguingly and deeply gets into in Histoire(s) du cinema.

I think he’s the greatest person ever!

Where’s Matt with his list of the 50 other JLG threads out there?

@Drunken Father Figure of Old

Simply one of the best I’d say.
My top 5 by Godard (which made him Godard):

1. BREATHLESS (1960)
2. WEEKEND (1967)
3. PIERROT LE FOU (1965)
4. CONTEMPT (1963)
5. A WOMAN IS A WOMAN (1961)

My top 5 people in the world:

1. Jean Luc Godard
2. My fiancee
3. Lisa Simpson
4. Werner von Braun
5. Scorpio Velvet

Who?

@Drunken Father Figure of Old

“5. Scorpio Velvet”

How nice of you, Mr. DFFOO. :) Thank you!
I always admired you taste in films. Godard, Buñuel, Kubrick, Lynch, Tarantino, Cassavetes, & Antonioni… we still have simliar interests! :D (For Antonioni, have you seen & do you like ether: BLOW-UP (1966), ZABRISKIE POINT (1970), or THE PASSENGER (1975)?)

No hyphen = No credibility.

Here I am (or, The Joy of Search) . . .

http://mubi.com/topics/what-pisses-me-off-about-godard

http://mubi.com/topics/herzog-welles-and-bergman-on-godard?page=1

http://mubi.com/topics/godard-missed-cannes

http://mubi.com/topics/ive-realized-something-about-jean-luc-godard?page=1

http://mubi.com/topics/thoughts-on-godard

http://mubi.com/topics/when-godard-gets-political-i-get-bored?page=1

http://mubi.com/topics/your-favorite-godard-film?page=1

http://mubi.com/topics/jean-luc-godard-escoteric-or-still-relevant?page=1

http://mubi.com/topics/godard-vs-truffaut-personal-opinions?page=1

http://mubi.com/topics/godard-pedantic-and-pretentious?page=1

This might be provoking if it weren’t clearly ripped from Stephen Colbert’s “George Bush: Great president or the greatest president” line.

Godard is interesting in his exploration of style but his films are thematically bloated and intellectually unconvincing.

I like Breathless and Vivre Sa Vie.

I like Star Wars.

Greatest filmmaker of the 21st century.

He’s not the greatest French filmmaker, by the way.

“I’m writing you this letter from a distant land…”

Actually, Godard was THE greatest French filmmaker of the 20th century, guys.

Only 8 JLG threads ?

I would have guessed hundreds by now.

DFFOO

Why Lisa Simpson?

Actually, Wu, Marker comes right behind Godard and Melville in my book.

I love JLG the most. Why? I play the license plate game. Here in Virginnie we have 3 letter 4 number plates. The object is to pronounce his name using the 3 letters. So XRP 4235 becomes “Xean Ruc Picard”. Now as ARI pointed out quite rightly, the hypen is important. So when you say it it has to be two quick and one long.

Oh how I long to kiss his face.

Baudrillard wrote an essay titled “Godadrd does not exists”

“Actually, Wu, Marker comes right behind Godard and Melville in my book.”

That is a book I care not to peruse, my dear friend…
[I’m reading Nabokov so please excuse me]

“I would have guessed hundreds by now.”

There are . . . but why bespoil the magic of discovery.+

Wu is correct. Godard is Swiss, not French, so he is not the greatest French filmmaker.

“…it’s all really just banalities. But Godard, the most famous Swiss Maoist, will never be able to understand them. He might well, as is his usual practice, coopt the above—lift a word from it or an idea like that concerning filmed advertisements—but he will never be capable of anything but brandishing little novelties picked up elsewhere: images or star words of the era, which definitely have a resonance, but one he can’t grasp (Bonnot, worker, Marx, made in USA, Pierrot le Fou, Debord, poetry, etc.). He really is a child of Mao and Coca-Cola.”
“The Situationists and the New Forms of Action Against Politics and Art” (1967)

I can name 5 better French directors of the 20th century. Godard films of the 60’70’s are expired.

I didn’t realize film had expiration dates. Next time I watch one, I’ll be sure to check first.

Ask the hipster kids next door. They know all about expiration dates.

I hate the smell of stale films.