Martin Scorsese, one of the most celebrated filmmakers of our time, is one of the truest fans of the cinematic art form. In every essay he pens and every film he makes, his love for cinema is always apparent. With the passing away of one of the all-time great directors, Jean-Luc Godard, Scorsese has lost one of his last living heroes. In a beautiful essay in the October 2022 edition of Cahiers du Cinema, the magazine where Godard himself started his career, the Taxi Driver director has penned a heartfelt tribute to the French master.
Scorsese begins the essay by saying how he always keeps the television running on mute while he is editing his films. This helps him move away from the images he has shot and look at something new and fresh made by someone else. In one such editing session, Scorsese says he was mesmerized by what was running on the television, and it did not take him long to understand that he is watching a Godard film. “I didn’t know Lully’s opera Armide, I didn’t know the 16th century Torquato Tasso poem on which it was based, but I knew Godard. I knew his imprint, his signature”, Scorsese writes.
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The Academy Award and Palme d’Or winner then goes on to say how it was easy to go into a theatre in the 1960s and be enthralled by the works of the great masters. He cites the names of film icons like “Bergman, Oshima, Sembene, Varda, Imamura, Fellini, Truffaut”, but says, “And then, there was Godard”.
Scorsese goes on to speak about how Godard was a master of subverting the notions of film grammar in his works. The essay makes apparent his fascination with how Godard created his own rules and even blurred the distinction between fiction and reality.
Breathless, the first film made by Godard, is cited by Scorsese for its use of jump cuts, which intrigued him when he saw it for the first time. He also appreciates the French filmmaker’s use of colour. He says, “I used to be fond of saying that my favorite modern painters were Jean-Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni, but I really meant it.”
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While talking about the films Alphaville and Weekend, the Raging Bull director says that the way Godard chose to express himself in these films, not only through character and plot, but in the way the process of filming itself adds to the narrative, heightened one’s experience of watching the movie.
The importance of Godard as a voice of the 1960s Paris is also depicted in Scorsese’s writing when he says, “It was his constantly evolving voice, his response to everything happening in the world—the Algerian War, the Vietnam War, the influence of Mao, May ’68, the changing face of Paris, the inner lives of men and women and boys and girls, the ongoing reality of making a living and getting food on the table—that counted the most”.
Contempt, the film starring Brigitte Bardot, is Scorsese’s favourite Godard film. While speaking about the film’s importance in cinema history, Scorsese writes, “The final moment, when the camera pans away from the film being made to the calm ocean in the distance over calls for silence, never fails to move me deeply. It’s an elegy for cinema, for love, for honor, for western civilization itself.”