Raoul Coutard
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.
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Full filmography
- Les Rendez-vous du dimanche (1975) as Self
- Cinépanorama (1956) as Self
- Contempt (1963) as Cameraman
- Z (1969) as English Surgeon (uncredited)
- La Chinoise (1967) as Self - Cinematographer (uncredited)
- The Hideout (1971)
- The Bamboo Incident (1970) as Angry French man (uncredited)
- Cinéma! Cinéma! The French New Wave (1992) as Self
- Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suède (1993) as Self
- The Outskirts of Alphaville (2003)
- Godard, Love and Poetry (2007) as Self
- Jean Seberg: American Actress (1997) as Self
- The Making of Rocky Road to Dublin (2004) as Self
- CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel (2018) as Self
- Nouvelle Vague : El cine sin dogmas (2000) as Self
- Pierre Schoendoerffer, the Sentinel of Memory (2011) as Self
- Il était une fois... « Jules et Jim » (2008) as Self (chef opérateur)