Whatever conventions up until now that Jean Luc Godard had abided by were now completely abandoned; in addition, from this point on, Godard's work would become more politicised. Throughout the remainder of the sixties, Godard's work expressed a fundamentally Marxist social critique and challenged, engaged and even lectured to his audience. This period of his work culminated in the masterly Week-end (1967) a powerful indictment of living the bourgeois dream in modern France. However, he followed Week-end with a series of films that were overly didactic, perhaps with a view to stirring a revolutionary consciousness in the cinema going masses. Godard returned to more conventional cinema in 1979 with his Sauve qui peut la vie which perhaps revealed the beginning of Godard's maturity, dealing as it did more with sensuality and poetry.

He would continue in this vein throughout the eighties producing fantastic works that included Passion (1981), Prénom Carmen (First Name Carmen, 1983), Je vous salue Marie (I Salute Thee Marie / Hail Mary, 1985), Détective (Detective, 1985), King Lear (1987), Soigne ta droite: une place sur la terre comme au ciel (Keep Your Right Up: A Place on the Earth as in Heaven, 1987), and Nouvelle vague (New Wave, 1990). During the 1990s, he worked on the mammoth eight part series Histoire(s) du cinema which combined all the innovations of his video work and engagement in twentieth century issue and the history of film itself. Godard continues to work, his latest feature being Notre Musique (2004) in which he focuses on war specifically the war in Sarajevo.



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