Guwahati: The revolutionary French New Wave of cinema was introduced by the renowned French film director Jean-Luc Godard, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 91.
A statement released by his family mentioned that the director died peacefully at his home. “No official (funeral) ceremony will take place. He will be cremated,” the statement read.
Godard rose to fame in the 1960s with Breathless, which launched a series of movies that influenced filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.
A family member announced that the filmmaker had committed assisted suicide in Switzerland. French President Emmanuel Macron expressed grief, claiming that Godard “had the vision of a genius.”
Paying his tributes, Marcron wrote on Twitter, “He was like an apparition in French cinema. Then he became a master of it. Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of new wave filmmakers, invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art. We have lost a national treasure, a man who had the vision of a genius.”
Godard’s legal advisor Patrick Jeanneret told AFP that the Franco-Swiss filmmaker “had recourse to legal aid in Switzerland for a voluntary departure as he was plagued with’multiple invalidating illnesses,’ according to the medical report.”
It should be mentioned that in Switzerland, assisted suicide is permitted in certain situations.
Godard worked as a cinema critic before assuming control of the camera with his chic and edgy Breathless. The editing was quick and bold, the camera was moving continuously, and the narrative was loosely written.
“It was a film that took everything that cinema had done – girls, gangsters, cars – exploded all this and put an end, once and for all, to the old manner,” the filmmaker had once said.