Jean-Luc Godard, who has died at the age of 91, was the last survivor of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), the immensely influential movement of rebellious young filmmakers and critics who ensured that French cinema was the focus of film goers’ attention at the start of the 1960s.
Along with his friend François Truffaut and several other future directors, Godard had been writing devastating put-downs of the current state of the official French cinema in the magazine Cahiers du cinéma. At the same time, they devoured the Hollywood westerns and thrillers which were circulating freely in Paris and spent long evenings at the Paris Cinémathèque.
