Jean-Luc Godard, pioneering filmmaker of French cinema, dead at 91: ‘We have lost a national treasure’

Jean-Luc Godard, the decorated filmmaker whose robust influence was felt on both the French and global movie circuits, died Tuesday at age 91.

He was surrounded by loved ones when he died at his home in Switzerland, his longtime partner Anne-Marie Mieville told a local news agency. A cause of death has not been released.

Godard long earned acclaim as a pioneer of the French New Wave cinema movement, an era credited for shedding tradition in favor of experimentation and for exploring social topics through its films.

The French-born Godard made waves with his first movie, 1960′s “Breathless,” about a criminal in hiding and his relationship with an American student in France.

The British Film Institute ranked “Breathless,” which Godard wrote and directed, as the 13th- greatest movie ever made on its 2012 “Sight & Sound” critics poll, while the BBC put it 11th among foreign-language films on a 2018 list.

Godard won the Berlin International Film Festival’s highest honor, the Golden Bear, in 1965 for the science-fiction staple “Alphaville,” and the Venice Film Festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, in 1983 for “First Name: Carmen.”

He was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2010.

“We have lost a national treasure, the eye of a genius,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday, saying Godard “invented a resolutely modern, intensely free art form.”

Godard was married to actress Anna Karina from 1961 to 1965 and featured her in several of his films, including “Alphaville.”

He married actress Anne Wiazemsky in 1967 and frequently collaborated with her as well, including on the movies “Week End” and “One Plus One.” They divorced in 1979.

The filmmaker began his relationship with Miéville in 1978. Miéville is also a filmmaker whose work with Godard included co-writing 1980′s “Every Man for Himself” starring Jacques Dutronc, Isabelle Huppert and Nathalie Baye.

Godard’s death was mourned by many throughout the movie industry Tuesday.

“RIP Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most influential, iconoclastic film-makers of them all,” director Edgar Wright tweeted. “It was ironic that he himself revered the Hollywood studio film-making system, as perhaps no other director inspired as many people to just pick up a camera and start shooting.”

Cameron Bailey, the CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival, shared similar praise.

“Jean-Luc Godard might have despised posthumous praise but here we are,” Bailey tweeted. “His staggering body of work over seven decades showed him to be a rare, true genius in cinema. It was playful and punishing. It challenged every viewer, and rewarded the persistent.”

With News Wire Services