William Klein Jean-Luc Godard 1960
“During our interview, Godard referred
to the New Wave not only as ‘liberating’ but also as
‘conservative.’ On the one hand, he and his friends saw
themselves as a resistance movement against ‘the occupation of the
cinema by people who had no business there.’ On the other, this
movement had been born in a museum, the Cinémathèque: Godard and his
peers were steeping themselves in a cinematic tradition — that of
silent films — that had disappeared almost everywhere else.
Thus, from the beginning, Godard saw the cinema as a lost paradise that
had to be reclaimed.”
—From and Interview with Jean-Luc Godard by Richard Brody, “The New Yorker” 2000