Only by loving do you open women to love. This is not a quote from Jean-Luc Godard, and speaking of his relationship with the feminine, it seemed to us an ideal rethinking of his famous aphorism “only by shooting, you discover what you shoot.” For the great experimenter New Vagwho passed away yesterday at the age of 91 after resorting to euthanasia at his home in Rolle, Switzerland. relationships with women were complex and ambivalent, constantly unresolvable, never peaceful. How is the relationship with Anna Karinamarked by “ups and downs”. “We loved each other very much. But it was difficult to live with him. (…) He was the kind of person who could say, ‘I’ll go get cigarettes’ and then come back in three weeks,” the actress told AFP in 2018 on the occasion of the theatrical revival of her first film as a director. Live Ensemble (1973).
Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard
Godard accidentally discovered her when she was still a minor, while posing for a Monsavon advertisement while lying in a bathtub. It was then that a young girl who arrived in Paris at the age of 17 with 10,000 francs in her pocket from Denmark and without an acquaintance was offered a small role in Bou de souffléhis first feature film. Due to the presence of a nude scene, Anna refused, but Godard returned to her the following year, offering her the lead role in Little Soldier, a political film questioning torture in Algeria. It was on the set that they fell in love and were married on March 3, 1961 in Benin, Switzerland.
Together they will make seven films, including Une femme est une femme, Vivre knows the ways, Alphaville As well as Pierrot le fou, an inexhaustible source of jokes that have become legendary, such as the sublime “You speak to me with words, I look at you with feelings”, addressed to the character played by Jean-Paul Belmondo. Their relationship is similar to that staged in their films, both lost in desire and undermined by false starts, detachment and misunderstanding. In real life the actress will never be truly accepted by the Godard familywho thinks he comes from a lower social background than his (the director came from a wealthy middle-class Protestant family of Swiss origin). The coexistence between Anna and Jean-Luc becomes more complicated when the actress loses her baby in her 7th month of pregnancy: a drama that will render her infertile and from which she will never recover. Disappeared in 2019, Karina confesses about her relationship: “In the end, the dialogues of the films that we shot together are like conversations that we did not have. The conversations that remain. The couple divorced on December 21, 1967, because in the meantime another female muse entered the director’s life: Ann Wiazemsky.
Anna Wiazemsky and Jean-Luc Godard
Born in 1947 in Berlin and grandson of François Mauriac, Vyazemsky met Godard on the set of Au Hasard Balthazar Robert Bresson. 17 years younger, refuses courtship at first, sends him a love letter ten months later: now June 1966. Together they walk the world. La Chinoise, free adaptation of the novel Demons Fedor Dostoevsky; 10 days before its release in 1967, she and Godard get married. Anna is still a minor and only two witnesses are present, they will be together for three years. Meanwhile, student riots took place in France in May 1968. The films belong to those years. Weekend (1967) and One plus one (1968) starring the Rolling Stones. “The Jean-Luc I’m describing, Jean-Luc underwear, 1967 – I don’t know what he’s become since then.. On the other hand, I continue to admire his films,” says Ann about him. Madame Figaro in 2012 before dying in 2018.
Anne-Marie Mieville and Jean-Luc Godard
A few years later, his life enters Anne Marie Mieville. Born in 1945 in Lausanne, she is a photographer, director of a bookstore and has even recorded two pop discs. She met Jean-Luc Godard in 1972 and became his closest collaborator for more than a decade: next to him and in his films, she is a photographer, screenwriter, editor, co-director and sometimes artistic director, but never an actress. Of all the women in his long life, Anne-Marie was undoubtedly the one who was part of her. It is no coincidence that she announced the director’s death yesterday together with Godard’s producers. “He wasn’t sick, he was just malnourished,” said a relative of the family. Liberation. So he decided to end it. It was his decision and it was important for him to be known.”
Brigitte Bardot and other muses
Alongside his beloved muses, there are also some female figures who have played an important role in his films, contributing to their success, starting with the blonde herself. Brigitte Bardot in Le Mepri (1963) continue Jean Seberg paired with Jean-Paul Belmondo in À souffle (1960). The American actress will describe the shoot as “a crazy experience: no blemishes, no makeup, no sound! But this is so contrary to Hollywood customs that I become natural. And then Chantal Goyaabout what Male, Female the magazine will tell Trois Cooler: “We didn’t do anything as Godard wanted, we decided everything! At one point with Marlene Jaubert, he asked us to strip for the bathroom scene. Our silhouettes had to move behind the frozen windows. I don’t want to kiss anyone. I hid under the sink and Marlene pretended to be me.” Once again, Jane Fonda, militant and rebellious journalist in Tout va bien (1972), Vladi’s Marina Deux ou trois chooses que je sais de elle (1967) As well as Natalie Bai in Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1979) and Detective (1985). Divine and immortal as he dreamed, imagined, and in his own way loved them.
Source: Elle