Raoul Coutard
Camera
Biography
Raoul Coutard (16 September 1924 – 8 November 2016) was a French cinematographer. He is best known for his connection with the Nouvelle Vague period and particularly for his work with director Jean-Luc Godard. Coutard also shot films for New Wave director François Truffaut as well as Jacques Demy, a contemporary frequently associated with the movement. He shot over 75 films during a career that lasted nearly half a century. Coutard originally planned to study chemistry, but switched to photography because of the cost of tuition. In 1945, Coutard was sent to participate in the French Indochina War; he lived in Vietnam for the next 11 years, working as a war photographer, eventually becoming a freelancer for Paris Match and Look. In 1956, he was approached to shoot a film by Pierre Schoendoerffer, La Passe du Diable. Coutard had never used a movie camera before, and reportedly agreed to the job because of a misunderstanding (he believed he was being hired to shoot production stills of the film). Coutard's first work collaboration with Jean-Luc Godard was Godard's first feature, À bout de souffle, shot in 1959. He was reportedly "imposed" on Godard by producer Georges de Beauregard; the director had already settled on a different cinematographer. Coutard photographed nearly all of Godard's work in the Nouvelle Vague era (1959 - 1967), with the exception of Masculin, féminin; their last work during this period was Week-end (1967), which marked the end of Godard's work as a 'mainstream' filmmaker. The two did not work together again until Passion; their final collaboration was Godard's next feature, Prénom Carmen. ... Source: Article "Raoul Coutard" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Known For
A talk show presented by Michel Drucker
Les Rendez-vous du dimanche
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Cinépanorama
A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.
Breathless
A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang to direct an adaptation of "The Odyssey," but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.
Contempt
Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.
Pierrot le Fou
Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.
Vivre Sa Vie
Lemmy Caution is on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of a malevolent computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s daughter Natasha, Lemmy must unravel the mysteries of the strictly logical Alpha 60 and teach Natasha the meaning of the word “love.”
Alphaville
A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.
Weekend
Five swindle stories, taking place in five international cities: Tokyo, Japan ("Fumiko's Five Benefactors" by Hiromichi Horikawa); Amsterdam, The Netherlands ("A River of Diamonds" by Roman Polanski); Naples, Italy ("The Road Map" by Ugo Gregoretti); Paris, France ("The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower" by Claude Chabrol); and Marrakesh, Morocco ("The Confidence Man" by Jean-Luc Godard). Godard's segment was not included in the original French cinema release, and Polanski's segment was not included on the 2016 home disc release.
The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers
Pierre Lachenay is a well-known publisher and lecturer, married to Franca and father of Sabine. He starts a love affair with air hostess Nicole, which Pierre is hiding, but he cannot stay away from her.
The Soft Skin
A prominent politician is murdered during a demonstration. The government and army are trying to suppress the truth, but a tenacious magistrate is determined to not to let them get away with it.
Z
Cinephile slackers Franz and Arthur spend their days mimicking the antiheroes of Hollywood noirs and Westerns while pursuing the lovely Odile. The misfit trio upends convention at every turn, be it through choreographed dances in cafés or frolicsome romps through the Louvre. Eventually, their romantic view of outlaws pushes them to plan their own heist, but their inexperience may send them out in a blaze of glory -- which could be just what they want.
Band of Outsiders
Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.
Shoot the Piano Player
Now aged 17, Antoine Doinel works in a factory which makes records. At a music concert, he meets a girl his own age, Colette, and falls in love with her. Later, Antoine goes to extraordinary lengths to please his new girlfriend and her parents, but Colette still only regards him as a casual friend. First segment of “Love at Twenty” (1962).
Antoine and Colette
Longing for a baby, a stripper pursues another man in order to make her boyfriend jealous.
A Woman Is a Woman
A small group of French students are studying Mao, trying to find out their position in the world and how to change the world to a Maoistic community using terrorism.
La Chinoise
Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves home, with the intent track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal? What is her purpose?
The Bride Wore Black
In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim and both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine.
Jules and Jim
A bored young man meets with his former girlfriend, now a cabaret dancer and single mother, and soon finds himself falling back in love with her.
Lola
As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.