Editing Jean-Luc Godard (section)

=== Film criticism ===
In Paris, in the [[Quartier Latin|Latin Quarter]] just prior to 1950, ''ciné-clubs'' (film societies) were gaining prominence. Godard began attending these clubs—the [[Cinémathèque Française]], Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin (CCQL), Work and Culture ciné club, and others—which became his regular haunts. The Cinémathèque was founded by [[Henri Langlois]] and [[Georges Franju]] in 1936; Work and Culture was a workers' education group for which [[André Bazin]] had organized wartime film screenings and discussions and which had become a model for the film clubs that had risen throughout France after the Liberation; CCQL, founded in about 1947 or 1948, was animated and intellectually led by [[Maurice Schérer]].{{sfn|Brody|2008|pp=8–17}} At these clubs he met fellow film enthusiasts including [[Claude Chabrol]] and [[François Truffaut]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Jean-Luc Godard Biography: The Black Sheep |url=http://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/jean-luc-godard.shtml#blacksheep |work=New Wave Film |access-date=24 May 2013 |archive-date=22 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722141245/http://newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/jean-luc-godard.shtml#blacksheep |url-status=live }}</ref> Godard was part of a generation for whom cinema took on a special importance. He said: "In the 1950s cinema was as important as bread—but it isn't the case anymore. We thought cinema would assert itself as an instrument of knowledge, a microscope... a telescope.... At the Cinémathèque I discovered a world which nobody had spoken to me about. They'd told us about [[Goethe]], but not [[Carl Theodor Dreyer| Dreyer]]. ... We watched silent films in the era of talkies. We dreamed about film. We were like [[Christians in Rome| Christians]] in the [[Catacombs of Rome| catacombs]]."<ref>{{cite web |title=Godard Biography |url=http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/Jean-Luc-Godard/biography/ |work=Monsters and Critics |access-date=24 May 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131102040712/http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/Jean-Luc-Godard/biography/ |archive-date=2 November 2013}}</ref><ref>[http://www.oocities.org/paris/4206/refr000.htm#03 "Le cinema n'a pas su remplir son role"]. Jean-Pierre Lavoignat and Christophe d'Yvoire, ''Studio'', number 96, 155–158. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170125040941/http://www.oocities.org/paris/4206/refr000.htm#03 |date=25 January 2017 }}</ref>

His foray into films began in the field of [[Film criticism| criticism]]. Along with Maurice Schérer (writing under the to-be-famous pseudonym [[Éric Rohmer]]) and [[Jacques Rivette]], he founded the short-lived film journal ''{{ill|La Gazette du cinéma|fr|La Gazette du cinéma}}'', which saw the publication of five issues in 1950.<ref name=":3" /> When Bazin co-founded the influential critical magazine ''[[Cahiers du Cinéma]]'' in 1951 (a seminal publication on cinema and its main observers and participants), Godard was the first of the younger critics from the CCQL/Cinémathèque group to be published.{{sfn|Brody|2008|p=28}} The January 1952 issue featured his review of an American melodrama directed by [[Rudolph Maté]], ''[[No Sad Songs for Me]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Andrew |first1=Dudley |title=André Bazin |date=2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=244 |isbn=978-0-19-993824-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gyBpAgAAQBAJ |access-date=22 March 2023 |archive-date=26 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326164807/https://books.google.com/books?id=gyBpAgAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref> His "Defence and Illustration of Classical Découpage" published in September 1952, in which he attacks an earlier article by Bazin and defends the use of the [[Shot/reverse shot|shot–reverse shot]] technique, is one of his earliest important contributions to cinema criticism.<ref>{{cite web |title=Jean-Luc Godard Biography: Cahiers du Cinéma |url=http://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/jean-luc-godard.shtml#cahiers |work=New Wave Film |access-date=24 May 2013 |archive-date=22 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722141245/http://newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/jean-luc-godard.shtml#cahiers |url-status=live }}</ref> Praising [[Otto Preminger]] and "the greatest American artist—[[Howard Hawks]]", Godard raises their harsh melodramas above the more "formalistic and overtly artful films of [[Orson Welles| Welles]], [[Vittorio De Sica| De Sica]], and [[William Wyler| Wyler]] which Bazin endorsed".{{sfn|Brody|2008|pp=29–30}} At this point Godard's activities did not include making films. Rather, he watched films, and wrote about them, and helped others make films, notably Rohmer, with whom he worked on ''[[Présentation ou Charlotte et son steak]]''.{{sfn|Brody|2008|pp=26–27}}