The grandfather of reality

Amidst the fog of cigarettes and intertextuality stands Jean Luc Godard, an exemplary pioneer of French New Wave. The French New Wave favoured style, low budget and existential themes over the conventions of classic cinema. Similarly Godard with his iconic thick rimmed glasses and receding hairline favoured a bohemian lifestyle over conventional insipidness.
Beginning his career as a film critic and writer of journals and articles, Godard was always immersed in the realm of cinema. He moved back to Paris (his birthplace) for University and was financially cut off from his parents for his profligate way of life. It is here that he met André Bazin, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Jacques Rozier, and Jacques Demy in the ciné-clubs of the Latin Quarter. This team would be the first to construct cinematic realism with innovative new aesthetics that would continue to be imitated for forty years.
After a series of short films and unfinished projects, Godard’s first feature film A Bout De Souffle is quite arguably his most popular; its enduring popularity proves this. Through the beauty, charm and freedom of his characters the film will always translate to the young, whilst the ideological undertones remain apparent to those sensitive to the politics of the movie. However, regardless of the unavoidable beauty of his actors, Godard does not force the audience to like his protagonists (Michael Poiccard in A Bout de Souffle aggressively addresses his audience with, ‘If you don't like the sea... and don't care for the mountains... and don't like the big city either... go hang yourself!’). The characters remain convincing as humans rather than fanciful as the American movie-stars that they ineffectively channel.
Less successful than his French cinema was Sympathy for the Devil, Godard’s documentation of counter-culture in its most hip-swinging personification; The Rolling Stones. In 1968, Godard used the rehearsal and recording of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ as a backdrop to discussion on various 60’s ideological movements such as the Black Panthers (Black Power), feminism, communism and fascism. Though he was making his stand politically he managed to gain major cool points by having Mick Jagger mincing around on screen to classic Stones music. However, the film never gained much popularity - though it still pleases those with a penchant for unconventional cinema, skinny rock stars or political commentary.
Through orchestrating seven-minute tracking scenes, jump-cuts and character asides, Jean Luc Godard made film that admitted it was film, not fantasy - and people loved him for that. This is why his influence can still be detected in the works of Won Kar-Wai and Western cinema such as the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. So shed any fears of subtitles, embrace the Parisian inside of you and treat yourself to the alluring French, cast in Black and White. Formidable!