Jean-Luc Godard died in September at the age of 92. Why should a French-Swiss film director interest us in Pakistan? Don’t we have enough crimes and floods, gossip and politics going around to keep us engaged? Actually, he should interest us precisely for these reasons, as he was one of those who taught us many things — including how to deal with life and understand its challenges.

Godard was born in 1930 and came of age in the 1940s and 50s — an era of immense devastation during the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War. The events of that age shaped him as a keen observer of moving objects and as an interlocutor in a dialogue that was transforming the art and culture scene of continental Europe. He ended up as one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century, with both artistic achievements and financial failures.

Understanding Godard calls for coming to grips with the likes of Eisenstein and Orson Welles, the two great inspirations for our French novice of the 1950s. Eisenstein had introduced his Montage theory and practice of editing by 1925 — when he was still in his 20s — and produced masterpieces such as Strike, Battleship Potemkin and October. Welles, by the age 26, had acted in and directed one of the greatest movies of all times — Citizen Kane — with his innovative shots and fantastic storytelling. Now, Godard was in his 20s with an immense desire to make a breakthrough.

Apart from groundbreaking cinematography and editing, Eisenstein and Welles had something more in common that impacted Godard. If Eisenstein were interested in promoting a proletarian version of reality, Welles was keen on exposing a capitalist mindset that was bordering on criminality.

What is there to learn in Pakistan from the life and work of the late, celebrated French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard? Actually, quite a lot…

From 1925 to 1955, the world of cinema had progressed by leaps and bounds. From Soviet socialist realism and Hitler’s propaganda films, such as Triumph of the Will, to American film noir starring Humphrey Bogart, from the Italian neorealist cinema of Vittorio De Sica (Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves) to Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, all attracted Godard — who now felt pregnant with new ideas in filmmaking.

Arguably, by the late 1950s, French cinema was lagging behind in its artistic expression, but not in its film criticism. I say arguably, because there had been Jean Cocteau and Robert Bresson who had directed some fairly good movies such as Beauty and the Beast (1946), Orpheus (1950), A Man Escaped (1956) and Pickpocket (1959) — but by then they were already in their 50s. Luckily, France did have film critics calling for a revolutionary change in French cinematography.

Perhaps the most influential French film critic and theorist was Andre Bazin, who was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du Cinema (Notebooks on Cinema). Bazin was a strong proponent of realism; to him “realism was the most important function of cinema”, by attempting to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative fiction.

Interestingly, some geniuses appear to be in a hurry: Eisenstein died at the age of 50 in 1948; Bazin was even younger, leaving this world at 40 in 1958. Then comes Eric Rohmer on the French film scene, taking over the editorship of Cahiers du Cinema and encouraging his younger friends, Godard and Francois Truffaut, to make a transition from writing on films to writing screenplays, producing and directing.

And then there emerges a group of at least half-a-dozen outstanding film personalities in Paris, all in their 30s: Claude Chabrol, Godard, Alain Resnais, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Truffaut and, not to forget one Belgian woman, Agnes Varda, and her French husband Jacques Demy — the couple specifically focused on women’s issues.

This group was highly intellectual in their approach and experimented with innovative ideas and techniques that spawned the famous French New Wave. The 1960s became a golden age of French cinema, mainly thanks to the contribution of this group of rebels, so to say.

Godard, like many of his friends and colleagues, started off as a cinephile. So the first lesson to draw from them is that you can’t excel at anything unless you develop a deep love for that art or craft early in life. Godard confessed to have seen hundreds of movies at a pretty young age; and that he did with a keen eye to detail. That enabled him to write critically about the cinema that was evolving after the Second World War. For nearly 10 years, he immersed himself in the intricacies of world cinema and critiqued it with passion.

We learn from Godard and his friends that, unless one develops an intellectual streak, it is well-nigh impossible to expose the shortcomings of an art form. From there it takes you to be critical of society itself in a way that is impressive and innovative.

By 1960, Godard’s friends — Varda (Le Pointe Courte, 1955), Chabrol (Le Beau Serge, 1958) and Truffaut (The 400 Blows, 1959) — had already ventured into filmmaking, which heralded the French New Wave. Now, Godard was about to jump in with a bang, which he did with his debut feature film, Breathless.

With Breathless, he broke with tried-and-tested conventions. The next lesson we learn from him is that we should try to hear, read and see differently from what people normally do. Godard’s take was different from the one that Soviet realism and Italian neorealism had shown us. He taught us how to perceive life from a critical rather than a realist or neorealist angle. His approach was much more nuanced towards reality, and that made him different from the likes of Eisenstein and Vittorio de Sica, or even from Satyajit Ray.

Essentially, he was not a delineator of simple reality as one would have expected from a realist or neorealist director or filmmaker. He remained a film critic for the sake of critiquing life and the world at large. This art he had developed under the wings of his fellow filmmakers who were equally — if not more — involved in similar intellectual endeavours.

The lesson here is that a society needs a group of critical thinkers and creative directors who — with various degrees of success — can have an impact on society. Looking at today’s Pakistan, we find such people only at the receiving end of injustices and mostly running for their lives.

If a society manages to protect its young enthusiasts from the wrath of the conservative lot, there is hope. These creative and critical minds accrue knowledge and make it accessible to others; by doing this they enhance the transformative potential of youth that is thirsty for new ideas.

Godard and his friends did all this with low-budget productions that were rich in their aesthetic value. Violating the conventions and rules established earlier by the mainstream was a main objective that Godard et al managed to achieve in a short span of time, by transforming not only French cinema but filmmaking across the world.

Perhaps the last lesson to learn from him is that one has to be an open sceptic of traditions to play a transformative role. Societies such as Pakistan do not allow sceptics to thrive, they target and torture them with impunity, without realising the harm their intolerance is doing to society and its youth.

If we keep repeating the same mistakes and try to kill those who may show us a different path, we end up in an abyss — and that’s precisely what we have done.

Interested readers may do an internet search to find out more about Godard.

The writer can be reached at Mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk. He tweets @NaazirMahmood

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 23rd, 2022