# Jean-Luc Godard, giant of the French New Wave, dies at 91
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** movies, celebrity-death
**Created:** [September 13, 2022, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500 "2022-09-13T13:39:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2022, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500/1 "2022-09-13T13:39:57Z")
> **[Jean-Luc Godard, giant of the French New Wave, dies at 91](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/13/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91)**
>
> The radical director of Breathless and Alphaville, and who was a key figure in the French Nouvelle Vague, has died
> **[Jean-Luc Godard - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000419/)**
>
> Jean-Luc Godard. Director: Band of Outsiders. Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a...
Were his later movies any good, or did he peak with his movies in the 1960s such as Breathless?
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2022, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500/2 "2022-09-13T15:01:14Z")
I remember _Weekend_ blew my fragile little first-year mind, and _Masculine/Feminine_ was eye-opening too. Haven’t seen his later stuff.
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### Author:  [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2022, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500/3 "2022-09-13T18:06:22Z")
Saddened to hear this news.
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### Author:  [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2022, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500/4 "2022-09-13T18:35:43Z")
This saddened me, too. First sad this month. We saw _Le Petit Soldat_ and _Les Carabiniers_in my film class, and they blew my little mind.
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### Author:  [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2022, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500/5 "2022-09-13T19:31:06Z")
In terms of using the properties of the medium to express a point, Godard was indisputably a great – and influential – film director. In all likelihood, he is also the “great director” who made more bad and even unwatchable movies than any other. His sense of narrative – in the best of times loose – gradually abandoned him, making his films progressively less interesting.
Of his later efforts, I’ve seen _Germany Year Nine Zero_ (1991), an excruciating slog of a TV movie that makes its one point – the loss of German identity following reunification – repeatedly, repeatedly while wasting Eddie Constantine (as “Lemmy Caution”) in one of his last roles. Godard’s short piece for _Aria_ (1987) was one-joke…which was one joke more than could be found in most of the rest of the film.
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### Author:  [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2022, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500/6 "2022-09-13T19:32:54Z")
Well, he’s taken his last breath.
Seriously, though, I love that movie. He and Belmondo were like Scorcese and DeNiro.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2022, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500/7 "2022-09-14T02:15:48Z")
I worked on my friend’s film, Zombie! Vs. Mardi Gras. I think only The Christian Science Monitor picked up that it was influenced by Jean-Luc Godard. (George Romero zombies, Roger Corman budget, and directed by Jean-Luc Godard.)
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### Author:  [@MortSahlFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MortSahlFan)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2022, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jean-luc-godard-giant-of-the-french-new-wave-dies-at-91/971500/8 "2022-11-07T22:59:59Z")
I’d recommend “Les Mepris”, especially for those who might not be the biggest “art-house” fans.