A biography for Jean-Luc Godardhasn’t been written yet.
“One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.”
“Once I had seen 'Journey to Italy,' I knew that, even if I were never to make movies, I could make them.”
“When the Holocaust happened, I was 15 years old. My parents kept it a secret from me, despite belonging to the Red Cross. I only found out about it much later. Even today I still feel guilty, because I was an ignoramus between the age of 15 and 25. I am sorry I couldn't stand up for them.”
“To be immortal and then die”
“We once believed we were auteurs, but we weren't. We had no idea, really. Film is over. It's sad nobody is really exploring it. But what to do? And anyway, with mobile phones and everything, everyone is now an auteur.”
“I had the feeling that Sarajevo was the perfect place to shoot the film I wanted to shoot. It is the perfect illustration of purgatory.”
“I prefer to work when there are people against whom I have to struggle.”
“All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.”
“I write and film history; I don't make it. One can be a good critic and a moral observer, but one remains professionally detached as a writer and a filmmaker.”
“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”
“We were for Mao, but when we saw the films he was making, they were bad. So we understood that there was necessarily something wrong with what he was saying.”
“One has to change one's life. Maybe this is easier for people who have nothing to do than for those who have something to do.”
“Spielberg, like many others, wants to convince before he discusses. In that, there is something very totalitarian.”
“I don't have a visa for the U.S., and I don't want to apply for one. And I don't want to fly for that long.”
“A film ingeniously directed does indeed give the impression of having been laid end to end, but a film ingeniously edited gives the impression of having suppressed all direction.”
“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”
“The history of cinema appears to be easy to do, since it is, after all, made up of images; cinema appears to be the only medium where all one has to do is re-project these images so that one can see what has happened.”
“Every edit is a lie.”
“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”
“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.”