Iconic French director Jean-Luc Godard passes away at 91
Film director Jean-Luc Godard, who spearheaded the revolutionary French New Wave of cinema, has died at 91.
In a statement on Tuesday, his family said the director had died "peacefully at home." They added: "No official [funeral] ceremony will take place. He will be cremated."
Godard began his career as a film critic before taking on the camera to create the stylish and edgy Breathless in 1960. His artistic finesse ushered French cinema into the New Wave movement and has also influenced directors from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino.
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His key films in the 60s also include Le Mépris (Contempt), Bande à Part (Band of Outsiders) and Alphaville.
"Godard is one who taught me the fun and the freedom and the joy of breaking rules… I consider Godard to be to cinema what Bob Dylan was to music," Quentin Tarantino said.
Contempt (1963) was credited by Scorsese as one of his 10 favourite movies. It is "one of the most moving films of its era" and Godard was "the great modern visual artists of cinema," Scorsese said in 2014.
Godard's storylines were not linear, meaning he mixed up time and space, changing the idea of a fixed narrative: a concept widely practised by Christopher Nolan.
He made more than 100 films in total. Godard received an honorary Oscar in 2011, where the dedication read: "For passion. For confrontation. For a new kind of cinema."
"RIP Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most influential, iconoclastic film-makers of them all," wrote director Edgar Wright. "It was ironic that he himself revered the Hollywood studio film-making system, as perhaps no other director inspired as many people to just pick up a camera and start shooting."
