The best Jean-Luc Godard’s documentary movies
We present our ranking of the best Jean-Luc Godard’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Jean-Luc Godard.
Hitchcock/Truffaut
7.3/10
Filmmakers discuss the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock and the book “Hitchcock/Truffaut” (“Le cinéma selon Hitchcock”), written by François Truffaut and published in 1966.
The Image Book
6.2/10
Jean-Luc Godard returns with a bracing, beautiful and confrontational essay film. Splicing together classic film clips and newsreel footage, often stretched, saturated and distorted almost beyond recognition, The Image Book interrogates our relationship with film, culture and global politics.
Room 666
6.6/10
During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wenders asks a number of global film directors to, one at a time, go into a hotel room, turn on the camera and answer a simple question: "What is the future of cinema?"
Meetin' WA
6.6/10
Revolutionary French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard conducts a twenty-five minute interview with influential and acclaimed American director Woody Allen on the cultural radiation, the ubiquity and significance of Television, and how Television compares with cinema as a medium and form of expression.
Belmondo: Il était une fois le beau monde
Petit Jour
5.1/10
Filmmakers in Action
7/10
What is the state of cinema and what being a filmmaker means? What are the measures taken to protect authors' copyright? What is their legal status in different countries? (Sequel to “Filmmakers vs. Tycoons.”)
Paparazzi
6.5/10
Paparazzi explores the relationship between Brigitte Bardot and groups of invasive photographers attempting to photograph her while she works on the set of Jean-Luc Godard's film Le Mépris (Contempt). Through video footage of Bardot, interviews with the paparazzi, and still photos of Bardot from magazine covers and elsewhere, director Rozier investigates some of the ramifications of international movie stardom, specifically the loss of privacy to the paparazzi. The film explains the shooting of the film on the island of Capri, and the photographers' valiant, even foolishly dangerous, attempts to get a photograph of Bardot.
A German Youth
7/10
At the end of the 1960s the post-war generation began to revolt against their parents. This was a generation disillusioned by anti-communist capitalism and a state apparatus in which they believed they saw fascist tendencies. This generation included journalist Ulrike Meinhof, lawyer Horst Mahler, filmmaker Holger Meins as well as students Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader.
Reporters
6.8/10
The co-founder of the Gamma press agency, Raymond Depardon, created this documentary of press photographers in Paris and their subjects by following the photographers around for one month, in October, 1980. In-between long hours waiting for a celebrity to emerge from a restaurant or a hotel, boredom immediately switches to fast action as the cameras click and roll when the person appears. The reaction to the gaggle of photographers is as varied as the people they often literally chase all around town. While some of the celebrities, such as Jacques Chirac who was mayor of Paris at the time, are perceived as comical caricatures, others are shown simply going about ordinary pursuits - including Catherine Deneuve, Gene Kelly, and Jean-Luc Godard.
Voyage à travers un film (Sauve qui peut (la vie))
A televisual journey guided by Jean-Luc Godard inside his film Sauve qui peut (la vie), incorporating filmed conversations between him and Isabelle Huppert and the film critic Christian Defaye.
Far from Vietnam
7.3/10
In seven different parts, Godard, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.
Petites notes à propos du film 'Je vous salue, Marie'
6.3/10
Notes on the inception and making of Hail Mary.
The Lovely Month of May
7.8/10
Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.
Pravda
5.5/10
Filmed clandestinely in Czechoslovakia on 16mm. It's one of the films Godard made with the Groupe Dziga Vertov - a Marxist film about the political situation after the '68 revolution.
JLG\PG
A movie about the contempt of the man who recorded the contempt.
Brunes et Blondes
Actresses' hairstyle in movies always carries a strong aesthetic statement associated with erotic, social, and historical meanings. In a bold and unexpected way, the film revisits this ultimate symbol of femininity in international cinema.
Operation Concrete
5.2/10
Godard returned to Paris briefly before getting a job as a construction worker on a dam project in Switzerland. With the money from the job, he made a short film about the building of the dam called Opération béton (Operation Concrete).
Michel Legrand: Sans demi-mesure
8/10
This documentary recounts the life of the late composer Michel Legrand, known for his works on Les Parapluies de Cherbourg or Les Demoiselles De Rochefort with the famous director Jacques Demy.
La nouvelle vague par elle-même
6.3/10
Made for Cinéastes de notre temps series. In 1964, several French New Wave auteurs discuss the success and crisis of the wave. Featuring Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rozier, Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda, Jean Rouch, and many others.
