'I have no use for a writer who directs my attention to himself and to his wit instead of the people he is interpreting,' Jean-Luc Godard said in one of his early articles for Cahiers du cinéma. From the beginning Godard liked to be contrary. In a magazine that championed a cinema of personal expression and was to proclaim la politique des auteurs, he was declaring in favour of the self-effacing author. And he was himself to become the least self-effacing of film-makers. In a medium that makes things visible but keeps the director invisible behind the camera - auteur criticism was invented to bring the authorial director out into the light - Godard has insistently directed our attention to himself and to his way of putting together images and sounds.

LRB 1 April 2004 | PDF Download