Iconic French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard passes away at 91
Geneva, Sep 13: Jean-Luc Godard, the ingenious enfant terrible of the French New Wave who revolutionised popular cinema in 1960 with his debut feature Breathless and stood for years as one of the world's most vital and provocative directors has passed away. 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.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Godard as the most iconoclastic of the New Wave directors who invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art form.
He added, We have lost a national treasure, the eye of a genius.
Godard defied convention over a long career that began in the 1950s as a film critic. He rewrote rules for camera, sound and narrative.
His films propelled Jean-Paul Belmondo to stardom and his controversial modern nativity play Hail Mary grabbed headlines when Pope John Paul II denounced it in 1985.
But Godard also made a string of films, often politically charged and experimental, which pleased few outside a small circle of fans and frustrated many critics through their purported overblown intellectualism.
Cannes Film Festival Director Thierry Fremaux told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he was sad. Immensely so" at the news of Godard's death.
Born into a wealthy French-Swiss family on December 3, 1930 in Paris, Godard grew up in Nyon, Switzerland, studied ethnology at the Sorbonne in France's capital, where he was increasingly drawn to the cultural scene that flourished in the Latin Quarter cine-club after World War II.
He became friends with future big-name directors Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer and in 1950 founded the short-lived Gazette du Cinema. By 1952 he had begun writing for the prestigious movie magazine Cahiers du Cinema.
After working on two films by Rivette and Rohmer in 1951, Godard tried to direct his first movie while travelling through North and South America with his father, but never finished it.
Back in Europe, he took a job in Switzerland as a construction worker on a dam project. He used the pay to finance his first complete film, the 1954 Operation Concrete, a 20-minute documentary about the building of the dam.
Returning to Paris, Godard worked as spokesman for an artists' agency and made his first feature in 1957 All Boys Are Called Patrick, released in 1959 and continued to hone his writing.
He also began work on Breathless, based on a story by Truffaut. It was to be Godard's first big success when it was released in March 1960.
The movie stars Belmondo as a penniless young thief who models himself on Hollywood movie gangsters and who, after he shoots a police officer, goes on the run to Italy with his American girlfriend, played by Jean Seeberg.
Like Truffaut's "The 400 Blows", released in 1959, Godard's film set the new tone for French movie aesthetics. Godard rejected conventional narrative style and instead used frequent jump-cuts that mingled philosophical discussions with action scenes.
He spiced it all up with references to Hollywood gangster movies, and nods to literature and visual art.
Godard also launched what was to be a career-long participation in collective film projects, contributing scenes to The Seven Deadly Sins along with directors such as Claude Chabrol and Roger Vadim. He also worked with Ugo Gregoretti, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Roberto Rossellini on the Italian movie Let's Have a Brainwash, with Godard's scenes portraying a disturbing post-apocalypse world.
Godard, who was later to gain a reputation for his uncompromising left-wing political views, had a brush with French authorities in 1960 when he made The Little Soldier. The movie, filled with references to France's colonial war in Algeria, was not released until 1963, a year after the conflict ended.
His work turned more starkly political by the late 1960s. In Week End, his characters lampoon the hypocrisy of bourgeois society even as they demonstrate the comic futility of violent class war. It came out a year before popular anger at the establishment shook France, culminating in the iconic but short-lived student unrests of May 1968.
Godard harboured a life-long sympathy for various forms of socialism depicted in films ranging from the early 1970s to early 1990s. In December 2007 he was honored by the European Film Academy with a lifetime achievement award.
Godard took potshots at Hollywood over the years.
He remained home in Switzerland rather than travel to Hollywood to receive an honorary Oscar at a private ceremony in November 2010 alongside film historian and preservationist Kevin Brownlow, director-producer Francis Ford Coppola and actor Eli Wallach.
His lifelong advocacy of the Palestinian cause also brought him repeated accusations of anti-semitism, despite his insistence that he sympathized with the Jewish people and their plight in Nazi-occupied Europe.
In 2010, Godard released Film Socialisme, a film in three chapters first shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
Godard married Danish-born model and actress Anna Karina in 1961. They divorced in 1965.
Godard married his second wife, Anne Wiazemsky, in 1967. He later started a relationship with Swiss filmmaker Anne-Marie Mi ville. Godard divorced Wiazemsky in 1979, after he had moved in with Mi ville to the Swiss municipality of Rolle, where he lived with her for the rest of his life.
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Strict security measures in place in Mumbai for Messi's events at 2 venues Dec 14, say police
Mumbai (PTI): In view of Argentine superstar footballer Lionel Messi's visit to Mumbai on Sunday, the city police are implementing stringent security measures, like not allowing water bottles, metals, coins inside the stadiums and setting up watchtowers to keep an eye on the crowd, officials said.
The police also said taking extra care to avoid any stampede-like situation and to prevent recurrence of the chaotic situation that unfolded in Kolkata during Messi's visit on Saturday as thousands of fans protested inside the Salt Lake stadium here after failing to catch a clear glimpse of the football icon despite paying hefty sums for tickets.
Messi is expected to be present at the Cricket Club of India (Brabourne Stadium) in Mumbai on Sunday for a Padel GOAT Cup event followed by attending a celebrity football match. He is expected to proceed to the Wankhede Stadium for the GOAT India Tour main event around 5 pm.
"In view of Lionel Messi's visit to Mumbai, the police are geared up and have put in place a high level of security arrangements in and around the stadiums located in south Mumbai. Considering the chaos that prevailed in Kolkata and the security breach, we have deployed World Cup-level security arrangements at Brabourne and Wankhede stadiums," an official said.
Expecting heavy crowd near the stadiums during Messi's visit, the city police force has deployed more than 2,000 of its personnel near and around both the venues, he said.
As the Mumbai police have the experience of security 'bandobast' during the victory parade of ICC World Cup-winning Indian team and World Cup final match at the Wankhede Stadium, in which over one lakh cricket fans had gathered, we are prepared to handle a large crowd of fans, he said.
"We are trying to avoid the errors that occurred in the past," the official said.
There is no place to sneak inside the stadiums in Mumbai like the Kolkata stadium, according to him.
The police are also asking the organisers to provide all the required facilities to the fans inside the stadium, so that there will be no chaos, he said, adding the spectators have purchased tickets in the range of Rs 5,000 to 25,000. After paying so much of amount, any spectator expects proper services, while enjoying the event, he said.
The police are expecting 33,000 spectators at the Wankhede Stadium and over 4,000 at Brabourne Stadium. Besides this, more than 30,000 people are expected outside and around the stadiums just to have a glimpse of the football sensation, he said.
The organisers responsible for Messi's India visit recently came to Mumbai to discuss security arrangements. During the meeting, the Mumbai police asked them not to take the event lightly, according to the official.
After those requirements were fulfilled, the final security deployment was chalked out, he said.
Police has the standard procedure of the security arrangements inside the Wankhede Stadium, where people are barred from taking water bottles, metals objects, coins. Police are setting up watch towers near the stadiums and there will be traffic diversions, so that there is maximum space available to stand, according to the official.
Police are also appealing to the spectators to use public transport service for commuting and avoid personal vehicles to reach south Mumbai.
To avoid any stampede-like situation, police are also taking precautionary measures and will stop the fans some distance ahead of the stadium and public announcement systems will be used to guide the crowd. Barricades will be placed at various places to manage the crowd.
In case the crowd swells up beyond expectation, the police will divert people to other grounds and preparations in this regard underway, he said.
Additional police force has been deployed in south Mumbai to tackle any kind of situation, he said.
