Jean-Luc Godard: Selected films

Innovative filmmaker and radical intellectual: Jean-Luc Godard, born in Paris on December 3, 1930, has never been interested in conventions; he's regularly ignored film awards and honors. The director likes to go beyond the boundaries of standard film productions, even doing without screenplays. In 1968, he ventured into a new genre and made an experimental documentary about the Rolling Stones.

A landmark work: Fast-paced and unconventional, "Breathless" catapulted Jean-Luc Godard to stardom. Following its Cannes premiere, the film starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg established the director's fame as a representative of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) French art film movement.

The seminal importance of "Breathless" was recognized immediately by critics. Godard was undoubtedly a star when he and his wife Anna Karina traveled to the Berlin International Film Festival in 1961. The marriage with the Danish actress, who had acted in many of his films, did not last long, however. They were divorced in 1964.

Reflection and self-criticism were important to the French director, who moved to Switzerland in 1953. Godard considers an intellectual look at politics and society as an inherent part of his work. Brigitte Bardot starred in "Contempt," a film about filmmaking. Legendary director Fritz Lang had a supporting role in the New Wave drama work.

Anna Karina played the lead role in many of Godard's films in the 1960s; she was both his muse and counterpart. She embodied a modern, emancipated type of woman, which was rather unusual in French cinema at the time. The pair got along better on set, however, than in private.

Godard ventured further into extremely innovative visual language with a visionary dystopian sci-fi movie. He shot "Alphaville" with expatriate American actor Eddie Constantine (right) as private detective Lemmy Caution in the suburbs of Paris, with their futuristic concrete and glass facades. The film won the Golden Bear award at the 1965 Berlin Film Festival.

Jean-Luc Godard continued to cast Anna Karina long after they were divorced and he was already involved with someone else. The crime comedy "Made in U.S.A," which is set in France, takes place in a town named Atlantic City, where the protagonist Paula (Anna Karina) tries to track down her boyfriend. Godard dedicated the film to the US director Samuel Fuller (1912-1997), whom he admired.

After a traffic accident in 1971 and a decade spent focusing on political video essays, he returned to the classic film circuit in 1980. He landed a hit with his comeback film "Every Man for himself" starring Isabelle Huppert. It was, he later said, "his second first film."

An intellectual revolutionary, forever investigating the essence of cinema, Jean Luc-Godard has secured his place in film history. In "New Wave," Alain Delon plays the role of a hitchhiker. The film combines literary quotations from different sources and periods, from Aristotle to Kafka.

Two legendary directors: Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut (right) who were best friends, colleagues and companions until the student riots in May 1968. They fell out completely over Truffaut's 1973 film "Day for Night." The break-up was radical, according to the documentary "Two in the Wave."

Without Godard's radical visual language and innovative editing technique — he established the contemporary use of jump cuts — filmmakers including Germany's Rainer Werner Fassbinder would not be conceivable. Many copied his style. He may be an icon, but he's shy about celebrating it: He didn't show up to accept an honorary Oscar in 2010 and a special award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018.