Jean-Luc Godard, the ingenious “enfant terrible” of the French New Wave who revolutionized popular cinema in 1960 with his first big endeavor, “Breathless,” and stood for years as one of the world’s most vital and provocative directors, has died. He was 91.

Swiss news agency ATS quoted Godard’s partner, Anne-Marie Mieville, and her producers as saying he died peacefully and surrounded by his loved ones at his home in the Swiss town of Rolle, on Lake Geneva, on Tuesday.

Godard defied convention over a long career that began in the 1950s as a film critic. He rewrote rules for camera, sound and narrative.

He worked with some of the best-known names of French cinema like Brigitte Bardot and bad-boy Jean-Paul Belmondo, who was propelled to stardom through Godard films. He profiled the early Rolling Stones, gave a voice to Marxist, leftist and 1960s-era Black Power politics, and his controversial modern nativity play “Hail Mary” grabbed headlines when Pope John Paul II denounced it in 1985.