The Films of Jean-Luc Godard

"Dixon has written an excellent book, thoroughly researched and documented and distinguished by insightful commentary and wonderful bagatelles. By performing an anatomy on the corpus of Godardian cinema, Dixon discovers not only that Godard has pronounced the death of cinema in his own films but also that the cinematic genre, medium, and discipline might well be dead. This is a momentous discovery, even though Dixon seems to concede it is polemical. This book could well be a passport to the (dis)information age, of particular value to Generation X. It is also an important commentary on the wider movement of nouvelle vague, in popular culture as well as cinema." — Paul Matthew St. Pierre, Simon Fraser University

"The author has written a lively, accessible book which relates Godard to current problems in film. Dixon has avoided making Godard a museum-piece figure relevant only to the sixties and seventies. He persuasively argues for the relevance of Godard's work to technological developments occurring today in cinema, television, and interactive media. He also draws on critical theory in an enlightening and accessible manner. One of the pleasures of this book is the manner in which it draws on contemporary theory to illuminate aspects of Godard's past and present work in a non-elitist manner." — Tony Williams, author of Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film

"Anyone interested in the history of European film in the last fifty years of the twentieth century needs the kind of comprehensive summing up this book provides. This is a succinct and well-balanced account of a long and distinguished career, with plausible interpretations of Godard as a man, filmmaker, and recorder of our century." — Edward T. Jones, author of Following Directions: A Study of Peter Brook