GODARD ON GODARD

Jean Luc Godard like many of his European contemporaries came to filmmaking through film criticism This collection of essays and interviews ranging from his early efforts for La Gazette du Cinéma to his later writings for Cahiers du Cinéma reflects his dazzling intelligence biting wit maddening judgments and complete unpredictability In writing about Hitchcock Welles Bergman Truffaut Bresson and Renoir Godard is also writing about himself his own experiments obsessions discoveries This book offers evidence that he may be even more original as a thinker about film than as a director Covering the period of 1950 1967 the years of Breathless A Woman Is a Woman My Life to Live Alphaville La Chinoise and Weekend this book of writings is an important document and a fascinating study of a vital stage in Godard s career With commentary by Tom Milne and Richard Roud and an extensive new foreword by Annette Michelson that reassesses Godard in light of his later films here is an outrageous self portrait by a director who even now continues to amaze and bedevil and to chart new directions for cinema and for critical thought about its history