Never crowned on the Croisette, Jean-Luc Godard, who died in September, was treated to a form of posthumous “celebration” on Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival, with the screening of a documentary on the Swiss filmmaker and his latest project. “The room is full. This means that the second life, or the thousandth life, of Jean-Luc Godard begins now, with the films that remain, “noted the general delegate of the Festival, Thierry Frémaux, in front of an audience where the filmmakers Jim Jarmush were present in particular. , Wang Bing (in competition this year with her documentary Youth) or actress Salma Hayek.
In Godard by Godard, Florence Platarets returns – without voice-over commentary – to the life of the New Wave agitator filmmaker, who died at the age of 91 while resorting to assisted suicide, legal in Switzerland. The opportunity, through sometimes unseen images, to see him direct his first feature film, the resolutely innovative Breathless. But also, in a sequence very applauded by the spectators present, to return to the Croisette in May 1968. While France was agitated by social unrest, Godard took the lead of a revolt of filmmakers who ended up having the film interrupted prematurely. Cannes film festival.
Another memorable moment for the director at Cannes, where he won the Jury Prize in 2014 and a special Palme d’Or in 2018: in 1985, when he came to present his feature film Detective, he received a cream pie in the face. This portrait was followed by a short film presenting the last work of Jean-Luc Godard under the name Film announces the film which will never exist: “Drôles de guerres”. Resuming the collage of a succession of images and words, interspersed with small video extracts, it was an adaptation of the novel by the Belgian writer Charles Plisnier False Passeports, winner of the Goncourt prize in 1937. This collection short stories follows different characters between the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the 1930s.
