French Literature Reviews - 2026

Antoine de Baecque, Godard. Definitive Biography
Theatre and Performance

Jean-Luc Godard: the cult filmmaker of Breathless and Alphaville, the ringleader of the French New Wave, the political agitator of the leftist years, the self-promoter, the misanthropic provocateur, the archivist, and the hermit of Rolle. In short, all these often contradictory personas embodied in a single figure: here is the definitive edition of the grand biography of the elusive Mr. Godard. Love him or hate him, it matters little—JLG helped weave the cultural history of the twentieth century, and his striking imagery (Belmondo's blue-painted face in Pierrot le Fou, Brigitte Bardot's backside in Contempt, Johnny Hallyday, Anne Wiazemsky in La Chinoise, as well as a Beethoven quartet or a cloud over Lake Geneva) has left an indelible mark on our times.

From the right-wing dashing hussar, scion of high Protestant society who walks on his hands to impress Bardot, to the cinephile activist who wrote a letter to André Malraux, "Minister of Kultur," denouncing "censorship, the Gestapo of the spirit"; from the tyrannical director to the octogenarian recipient of the Special Palme d'Or for The Image Book in 2018; from the politicized moralist in combat fatigues to the sepulchral King Lear puffing on a cigar; from the historian of images "connected to the past" to the iconoclast "high on show business"—ninety-two years of life, cinema, labor, and burning passions unfold across these pages. "His genius is greater than his drive for self-destruction," as Daniel Cohn-Bendit once remarked.

This is the resurrection of a bygone era in France, pulsating with an obsessive passion for cinema, where creativity, rivalry, and brotherhood continually intertwine.

Jean-Luc Godard emerged from the cinephilic culture of postwar France to become a central figure of the French New Wave. The intellectual landscape of the period was defined by shifting political engagements, rigorous film criticism, and a radical rethinking of cinematic form. Directors of this movement challenged traditional narrative structures, turning the camera into an instrument of philosophical inquiry and aesthetic experimentation. Readers interested in the history of twentieth-century cinema, the French New Wave, and the intersection of politics and art may find this biography relevant to their study of the subject.