Jean-Luc Godard, like many of his European contemporaries,
came to filmmaking through film criticism. This collection of
essays and interviews, ranging from his early efforts for La
Gazette du Cinéma to his later writings for Cahiers du Cinéma,
reflects his dazzling intelligence, biting wit, maddening
judgments, and complete unpredictability. In writing about
Hitchcock, Welles, Bergman, Truffaut, Bresson, and Renoir, Godard
is also writing about himself—his own experiments, obsessions,
discoveries. This book offers evidence that he may be even more
original as a thinker about film than as a director. Covering the
period of 1950–1967, the years of Breathless, A Woman Is a Woman,
My Life to Live, Alphaville, La Chinoise, and Weekend, this book of
writings is an important document and a fascinating study of a
vital stage in Godard’s career. With commentary by Tom Milne and
Richard Roud, and an extensive new foreword by Annette Michelson
that reassesses Godard in light of his later films, here is an
outrageous self-portrait by a director who, even now, continues to
amaze and bedevil, and to chart new directions for cinema and for
critical thought about its history.