The countless tributes to the late “Breathless” director were a testament to the French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard’s ongoing influence on filmmaking.
Godard committed assisted suicide in Switzerland, where the voluntary injection is lawful, and passed away at age 91. He wasn’t ill, just fatigued, a family member of Godard’s told media. Godard had “several crippling pathologies,” according to the director’s longtime attorney Patrick Jeannere, who confirmed this to The New York Times.
He was unable to live like you and I could, so, as he had done his entire life, he made the decision with tremendous clarity to declare, “Now, it’s enough,” according to Jeanneret.
Actors, movie critics, and other filmmakers paid tribute to the late “Band of Outsiders” hero.
In a tribute on social media, French President Emmanuel Macron praised Godard and said, “It was like an appearance in French cinema. He later attained mastery. The most controversial of the New Wave filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard, had created a resolutely contemporary, fiercely free work. A look of genius, a national treasure, is disappearing.