Godard was born in 1930 of Franco-Swiss descent and spent his childhood years between Switzerland and France. He was an anthropology student at the University of Sorbonne but did not attend classes much. He was first drawn to cinema by a reading of the essay “Outline of a Psychology of Cinema”, and La Revue du cinéma, which was re-launched in 1946.
Godard got deeply involved in the film societies of the Latin Quarter in Paris, like the Cinémathèque, the CCQL, and Culture Ciné Club toward the end of the 1940s. At these film societies and clubs he met fellow film enthusiasts and critics like Chabrol, Truffaut, and Jacques Rivette.
Godard said of this time, “We watched silent films in the era of talkies. We dreamed about film. We were like Christians in the catacombs.” He was the first of the young critics to be published. His “Defense and Illustration of Classical Découpage,” published in 1952, in which he criticizes an earlier publication by Bazin and defends the use of “shot-reverse shot technique”, is one of his most significant early contributions to cinema.

In the early 1950s he concentrated mainly on his work as a critic for Cahiers and helped his friend and editor, Éric Rohmer on “Présentation ou Charlotte et son steak”. In the late 1950s he made short films and collaborated with other directors like Truffaut. He burst onto the scene in 1960 with his first feature, Breathless, commencing the period between 1960-67 that was the most productive and important of his career.

Godard has reinvented himself dozens of times over a career spanning more than half a century and is still going strong. Below is a closer look at seven of his famous films from his productive early period.

Jean-Luc Godard's Magnificent Seven

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