French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, the godfather of France’s New Wave cinema, died at 91. The news of his death was reported by newspaper Liberation on Tuesday. The cause of his death remains unclear.
Godard was one of the pillars of the French New Wave and is known for films like Breathless and Pierrot le Fou. His rich film list in the 1960s also included Le Mépris (Contempt), Bande à Part (Band of Outsiders) and Alphaville.
Prior to his entry into filmmaking, Godard worked as a film critic for the magazine, Cahiers du Cinéma.
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Here are the top 5 best movie quotes by Godard
1. “Why must one talk? Often one shouldn’t talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)”
2. “Suddenly, I don’t know what to say. It happens often to me. I know what I want to say, I think about whether it is what I mean, but when the moment comes to speak, I can’t say it. – Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie.”
3. Patricia Franchini: “What is your greatest ambition in life?” Parvulesco: “To become immortal… and then die.” – Breathless
4. “To know that one does not know, is the gift of a superior spirit. Not to know and to think that one does know, is a mistake. To know that this is a mistake, keeps one from making it. I have the knowledge here.” – Contempt
5. “I can never have a real conversation with you. You never have ideas, only feelings. That’s not true. There are ideas in feelings.” – Pierrot le Fou
French President Emmanuel Macron said Godard “had the vision of a genius.” In a tribute on Twitter, Macron wrote: “He was like an apparition in French cinema. Then he became a master of it.
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“Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers, invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art. We have lost a national treasure, a man who had the vision of a genius.”