Godard’s films of the 1960s represent one of the great, furious bursts of energy and creativity in the history of cinema. These images show a restless master behind the scenes.
Godard (reflected in the mirror) preparing a scene with his then-wife Anna Karina for his 1961 film Une femme est une femme, a playfully experimental tribute to the Hollywood musical
Sifting through consumer cleaning products in the banlieues (suburbs) of Paris, during production on his provocative 1967 film 2 or 3 Things I Know about Her. Godard said he wanted: ‘to include everything: sports, politics, even groceries’
Against a towering block of flats in the Parisian suburbs during the summer of 1966 for 2 or 3 Things I Know about Her
Behind the camera on Pierrot le fou (1965)
Godard on the quayside in Toulon with Princess Aïcha Abadie, during filming of her short cameo appearance in the latter part of Pierrot le fou
Holding the clapperboard for the fictional film-within-a-film directed by Fritz Lang (in the chair) in Le Mépris (1963). Michel Piccoli (left) plays the film’s conflicted screenwriter, while Jack Palance (right) is its ruthless American producer
Filming the Black Panthers in a junkyard piled high with rusted cars for the sequences that are interspersed throughout One Plus One (aka Sympathy for the Devil), the 1968 film Godard filmed in London with The Rolling Stones
Shooting a revolver on the Riviera: Godard tests his firepower during the filming of Pierrot le fou in the south of France
Godard directs cinematographer Raoul Coutard on his groundbreaking debut film Breathless (1960). Coutard became Godard’s regular director of photography throughout the French new wave period
Filming his brilliant 1965 sci-fi Alphaville, which cleverly transformed contemporary Paris into a futuristic dystopia
Godard and Raoul Coutard shoot a roadside scene for Le Petit Soldat, an Algerian war espionage drama. Though this was Godard’s second film, shot in 1960, it was banned by the French authorities because of its political content and not released until 1963
The director looks on as his crew arrange the destruction of the famous traffic jam sequence for his apocalyptic 1967 film Week End. This film signalled Godard’s goodbye to anything resembling conventional narrative filmmaking to pursue a new interest in video and radical politics
By bfi.org.uk
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