Renowned filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard passed away at 91.
Godard, a pioneer of the New Wave in film, committed assisted suicide at his house on Tuesday in Rolle, Switzerland, where it is permitted, according to Godard’s longtime attorney Patrick Jeanneret.
Jeanneret added that the filmmaker had “multiple disabling pathologies” and “decided with a great lucidity, as he had all his life, to say, ‘Now, it’s enough.’ “
Godard was a French-Swiss filmmaker who was born in Paris and whose debut film, Breathless (A Bout de Souffle), launched both the director and French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo to fame on a global scale. Godard was rarely commercial and frequently radical.
Later, Richard Gere played the lead in a remake of the film that also included American actress Jean Seberg.
The movie succeeded in capturing a humorous and self-deprecating charm while paying a grim homage to American gangster movies via the lens of post-war French urbanisation.