On Godard, on what would have been his 95th birthday

As a film student/aspiring screenwriter, Jean-Luc Godard’s films were hugely important to me. I’m hardly the first aspiring screenwriter or film student to have been inspired by his works. There are plenty of terrible student films trying to pull off the same magic.

Beyond his films, it was his creativity at finding solutions to problems that has stuck with me.

Finding out that his first feature film, À bout de Souffle, was too long and being told to shorten it, Godard decided not to cut out any scenes. Instead he cut out the sections of shots that made the transitions easier. Continuity between shots wasn’t so important. If he had to lose part of what he’d filmed, he’d cut out those rather than lose full scenes.

For À bout de Souffle, he shot many scenes around the streets of Paris, making do with what he could in a scene. Much of the dialogue was rerecorded because the audio shot in the field was unusable. For many of his films, like Masculin Féminin, he’d tell the actors where to be on the day and feed them lines through a microphone and ear piece. He made it up each day.

His eye for what was actually important in a creative problem allowed him to find the solution. How to cut a few minutes out of your film? Cut down shots that show someone walking to the door, and focus on the story. How to quickly shoot in the city? Rerecord the dialogue later. How to show a married couple having an argument? Use the shot to focus on the space between them.

Reframing what is important refocuses the problem. The solution he found was always engaging while still holding the core part of the scene or film intact, in a way that connected with the audience.