Imagine you employ a bunch of actors, one of them is even an astonishing foreign beauty, you have a camera crew, a gaffer, set designers, prop makers, producers, you even have a composer for the score, you manage to scrape up all that money together to finally make a movie, the first day of shooting is finally here… and then you show up on set without a script. That was Jean-Luc Godard – most famously on the set of his 1963 film, Le petit soldat. Was he going to lose it all and never gain the trust of any producer again? No, instead he would create the most stylised and influential body of work a filmmaker has ever produced.

Godard’s spontaneous way of working meant he would start developing the dialogue and script on the spot. Raw, unpredictable and with typical Parisian intellectualism, he created like a true artist does with his masterpieces; from scratch. He rejected the idea of pre-writing a film early on in his career. ‘Seeing precedes the written word’ was the motto and a focus on visual language led the way – in this sense, he repeatedly emphasised the parallels between the history of cinema with the history of painting.

Art is ever-present in Godard’s work; graphic design and modern art are skilfully interpreted and used as props, drawing as much from pop culture as art classique to create a unique collage style. The run through the Louvre in Bande à part, those abstract camera tricks diverting the viewer’s perspective, and Pierrot le Fou’s Pierrot-Ferdinand [Jean-Paul Belmondo] reading a paperback of Elie Faure’s Histoire de l’Art in the bath. Godard even aligns himself with the greatest painter of modern art, Picasso himself, positioning the profile of his creation, Pierrot le Fou, right in the middle of two Picasso portraits. Basically equal in size and perspective, it’s a statement: If Picasso is the greatest painter, then Godard is the greatest filmmaker. His constant deconstructions, reconstructions, edits and metaphors create a rich pop-art collage.

Following his passing earlier this year, we look at Godard’s obsessions with visual language through artworks in three of his most iconic films.

Pierrot le Fou, 1965

When talking about art in Godard’s work, Pierrot Le Fou is loaded with examples. The dense display of modernist artworks by Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall, Renoir and others appear in the form of posters and postcards, loosely taped on the walls, juxtaposed with random magazine covers of Paris Match, while our protagonists are seen to be avid readers of Elie Faure’s History of art. Dominated by blue, red and yellow, the pop art references are instant and continuous, albeit mixed with the classics. Pierrot’s blue painted face can be seen as a then-contemporary reference to Yves Klein, vanishing into the blue sea and the sky.

Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle, 1967

Between whisperings and bold typography Godard oscillates around social issues such as consumerism, prostitution and oppression. The latter is present with large billboards in shouty type on colour blocks, ordering us to take notice, buy this, see that, do this. In contrast, the whispering off-voice, with its hushed messages, is all too powerless against society at large. as individuals seem small, almost disappearing into the busy backdrop of colourful advertising. Throughout, Godard continues his obsession with graphic design and delivers a closer look at how present and powerful it really can be. From gas stations to cornflakes, everything has a written message for us in this world of typeface capitalism. 

Masculin, Féminin, 1966

Title sequences and subtitles are underlined by the explosive noise of a gun while handwritten graffiti and printed newspapers structure this loose story of a young rebel in love. A hymn to pop culture and the Parisian youth of the 60s, the film is carried by Yeye music and features appearances from French stars Françoise Hardy and Brigitte Bardot. The font of those titles, with its typical oversized round dots, became symbolic of the French Nouvelle Vague as well as text boxes with unnaturally large word spacings. As an amateur graphic designer and autodidact, Godard’s layouts are synonymous with his art.

Godard’s fragmented narrative, cultural references and wordplay are reflected in the organisation of Masculin, Féminin. Described as a film about “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola”, Godard tells the story of their lives – ironically, the movie was censored in France for anyone under eighteen, exactly the group of people it was made for.