Jean-Luc Godard best quotes on cinema

Jean-Luc Godard, the legendary French filmmaker died at 91, as per reports from Liberation newspaper. Popularly regarded as the godfather of the French New Wave, the director started off as a film critic at Cahiers du Cinema. 

With a career spanning over six decades, Godard has cemented his place as a legend in the world of cinema, and someone whose words inspire established and aspiring filmmakers alike. 

As is the case with such a celebrated figure, some quotes attributed to Godard end up being misrepresentations. Here are Jean-Luc Godard’s best quotes on cinema. 

1. Photography is truth. The cinema is truth 24 times per second.

Godard’s insight on photography and movies comes in the 1960 movie La Petit Soldat. However, when taken out of context, as it often is, the quote can misrepresent the director’s relationship with cinema which is in reality, a little more complex. 

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It is better captured in his 1968 interview with Gene Youngblood for the Los Angeles Free Press, where the Frenchman said “the movie is not a thing which is taken by the camera; the movie is the reality of the movie moving from reality to the camera”. 

2. I pity the French cinema because it has no money. I pity the American cinema because it has no ideas

Godard often didn’t agree with many of Hollywood’s ways, and preferred to infuse his movies with an element of discussion. In a 1996 interview with Film Comment, Godard said he was better than Steven Spielberg as a filmmaker, but missed the point of commercial success in his works. 

3. Movies should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not in that order 

Godard was interviewing with Time magazine in 1981, when Georges Franju commented that a film should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. To this, Godard famously replied that it doesn’t have to be in that order. 

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Movies like Vivre sa Vie are divided into chapters but don’t follow a strict chronological pattern. 

4. Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.

Godard once remarked that cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world, referring to the medium’s capability to immerse audiences and give them a sense of reality. 

5. Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Godard in 1952, wrote an article titled “What is Cinema?” where he lay forth the premise that art attracts us by what it reveals of our secret selves, which kind of goes against his saying that cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world, because cinema as art would be responsible for holding up a mirror to individuals – going by Godard’s quote.