Jean-Luc Godard

Godard began as a critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, attacking the stodgy "Tradition of Quality" in French cinema and championing Hitchcock and Hawks instead. Then he and his fellow critics picked up cameras themselves. Breathless in 1960 brought him global attention, a milestone that experimented with narrative, continuity, sound, and camerawork in ways that redrew what film could be. Through the 1960s he made a string of works with actress and wife Anna Karina — Vivre sa vie, Bande à part, Pierrot le Fou — that Filmmaker magazine would call arguably the most influential body of work in cinema his…