The Films of Jean-Luc Godard

One of the most important, controversial, and prolific filmmakers in film history, and a founder of French New Wave cinema, Jean-Luc Godard has maintained an unbroken string of films in various genres and mediums from the late 1950s onward. Godard has established a reputation as a rebel who can work within and outside the system, producing films that are creative, breathtakingly beautiful, and yet commercial enough to earn back their production costs. In this book, Wheeler Winston Dixon offers an overview of all of Godard's work as a filmmaker, including his work for television and his ethnographic work in Africa. Free from the jargon and value judgments that have marred much of what has been written about Godard, this is the only book that covers the entirety of Godard's career, from his early film criticism for Cahiers du Cinema to his most recent video/film work. Illustrated with forty-six rare stills and researched in detail, it is the Godard book for the 1990s.

"...Dixon has avoided making Godard a museum-piece figure relevant only to the sixties and seventies. He persuasively argues for the relevance of Godard's work to technological developments occurring today in cinema, television, and interactive media. He also draws on critical theory in an enlightening and accessible manner. One of the pleasures of this book is the manner in which it draws on contemporary theory to illuminate aspects of Godard's pat and present work ina non-elitist manner". -- Tony Williams, author of Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film