French film director Jean-Luc Godard has died at the age of 91

Virgin Radio

13 Sep 2022, 14:47

Jean-Luc Godard, the famed director many credit with the New Wave of film has died at the age of 91.

Godard shot to fame in the 1960's with À bout de souffle (Breathless).

He influenced the likes of Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino.

It has been confirmed he died by assisted suicide in Switzerland.

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Godard, saying he "had the vision of a genius".

Mr Macron wrote on Twitter: "He was like an apparition in French cinema. Then he became a master of it.

"Jean-Luc Godard, the most iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers, invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art. We have lost a national treasure, a man who had the vision of a genius."

Godard's legal advisor Patrick Jeanneret that Godard "had recourse to legal assistance in Switzerland for a voluntary departure as he was stricken with 'multiple invalidating illnesses', according to the medical report".

He began his career as a film critic before he started making films.

The director once said: "It was a film that took everything that cinema had done - girls, gangsters, cars - exploded all this and put an end, once and for all, to the old style."

Tarantino named his production company A Band Apart, referencing one of Godard's films.

"Godard is one who taught me the fun and the freedom and the joy of breaking rules… I consider Godard to be to cinema what Bob Dylan was to music," he said.

Godard liked to work differently, saying famously: "A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end - but not necessarily in that order."

His family said in a statement that Godard had died "peacefully at home. No official [funeral] ceremony will take place. He will be cremated."