With all the hubbub over it being the 40th anniversary of May 68, one can’t help but think about the French New Wave, and Jean-Luc Godard. And right on schedule New Yorker film critic Richard Brody has a new book out on Godard entitled Everything is Cinema, The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.

Godard always connected the personal to the public in his films, using cinema to express himself and work out issues while still paying tribute to the medium he loved. Brody’s book is about 700 pages long and is thus very detailed in accounts of Godard’s “working life” - I should probably admit now that I’m only on page 251, which gets to me to the time in life when he made Pierrot le fou.

The book works well as a primer for the political and philosophical evolution of both Godard and France and thus how philosophy and politics influenced the films he would make. Brody does a good job of weaving the politics through Godard’s life without losing focus of the fact that when it comes to Godard, “everything is cinema.”

What also makes the 700 pager worth your time is gaining an understanding of where his most popular films, those from the 60s, actually stand in Godard’s opinion and how they were first received. Today many young cinephiles regard Band of Outsiders and Contempt as his best, so it’s interesting to learn that both of those films were made as attempts by Godard to produce a “hit.” Although Contempt specifically is also very much about Godard and his relationship to Anna Karina (as are many of his early films..). Godard’s efforts to thrive as a filmmaker while still keeping true to his vision is never boring.

Overall the text is fun, and while there’s lots of information you are never bored. As a filmmaker and lover of cinema I find it to be quite inspiring. The intricacies of how cinema was transformed over the early years of his career are fascinating and seem to suggest that even today, in a world that fashions film as a business and not an art, that making new, honest and exciting cinema is possible.

and order your copy today!

Also, be sure to give a listen to Leonard Lopate’s interview with Brody :

• http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2008/05/13

And to learn more about the book (by folks who are farther than page 251) read on:

• Jean-Luc Godard: Lights, Camera, Paradox!
• Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard - Available in May!
• Godard & Truffaut