Raoul Coutard

Camera

Raoul Coutard

Born 1924-09-16 · Paris, France

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.

Acting credits

Contempt poster
7.0

Art film producer Jeremy Prokosch, unhappy with the work of his director, hires Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of The Odyssey, but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb, he brings in a screenwriter to energise the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.

Contempt

1963

Z poster
7.8

A prominent politician is murdered during a demonstration. The government and army are trying to suppress the truth, but a tenacious magistrate is determined not to let them get away with it.

Z

1969

La Chinoise poster
6.9

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

1967

Godard, Love and Poetry poster
7.3

Documentary about director Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina. In 1960, Jean-Luc Godard films for the first time Anna Karina and falls in love. His cinema is transformed by it forever. Spanned from "Little Soldier" to "Crazy Pete" through "A Woman is a Woman", "My Life to Live" andd "Alphaville", this documentary tells how, during five years , Godard and Karina consciously mixed cinema and private life, with constant will to film "as in true life" and to live "as in film"

Godard, Love and Poetry

2007

The Hideout poster
3.7

A jewel thief hides his loot in a WELL while escaping. He returns several years later only to find there is a Resort on the site and the well is the centerpiece of the place. He then has to find a way to retrieve his haul.

The Hideout

1971

The Bamboo Incident poster
6.9

A young Vietnamese boy's life is thrown into turmoil by the war raging in his country. The ten year old remains with his mother and baby sister as his father goes off to fight for the Viet Cong. During his father's absence, his mother dies from overwork and the inability to find proper medical care for her illness. He cares for his baby sister and struggles to earn a living by shining shoes and doing other odd jobs before his father returns. Both an American soldier and a Viet Cong regular are shown defending their country's political agenda. Also shown are guerilla tactics and bombings in this feature directed by veteran combat photographer Raoul Coutard.

The Bamboo Incident

1970

No artwork available
NR

Making of Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965)

The Outskirts of Alphaville

2003

Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suède poster
4.5

Claude Ventura's documentary Chambre 12, Hotel de Suede, was made for the French television channel Arte in 1993. Ventura checks into room twelve in the hotel's final week of operation: it is demolished the day after he checks out. Room twelve was one of the principal locations for Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave masterpiece Breathless, and Ventura's documentary investigates the production of Godard's film.

Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suède

1993

No artwork available
3.3

An intimate window into one of the great movements in film history that brought about an evolution in the art of cinema. The documentary portrays the movement with insight on the lives and works of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and other principal players in the New Wave.

Cinéma! Cinéma! The French New Wave

1992

The Making of Rocky Road to Dublin poster
8.5

This documentary reunites director Peter Lennon and cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who recount the making of their then controversial but now classic documentary on Ireland in the Sixties. Rocky Road to Dublin was screened for only a few weeks at a single Dublin theatre.

The Making of Rocky Road to Dublin

2004

CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel poster
6.5

An epic exploration of the Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 70s, structured around a series of conversations with one of its most acclaimed exponents - Closely Observed Trains director Jiří Menzel.

CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel

2018

Nouvelle Vague : El cine sin dogmas poster
8.0

No synopsis available yet.

Nouvelle Vague : El cine sin dogmas

2000

Pierre Schoendoerffer, the Sentinel of Memory poster
NR

Pierre Schoendoerffer revisits his life and career, with a strong focus on the impact that his experience as a war cinematographer for the French army during the Indochina War had on him.

Pierre Schoendoerffer, the Sentinel of Memory

2011

Il était une fois... « Jules et Jim » poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Il était une fois... « Jules et Jim »

2008

Jean Seberg: American Actress poster
7.0

On September 8, 1979, actress Jean Seberg was found dead in her car not far from her home. Conclusion: suicide. Directors Fosco and Dubini believe she was murdered. The documentary is abundantly illustrated with film fragments and testimonials with people who knew her. Dubini and Fosco wrote the screenplay and edited it.

Jean Seberg: American Actress

1997

Behind the camera

The Bamboo Incident poster
6.9

A young Vietnamese boy's life is thrown into turmoil by the war raging in his country. The ten year old remains with his mother and baby sister as his father goes off to fight for the Viet Cong. During his father's absence, his mother dies from overwork and the inability to find proper medical care for her illness. He cares for his baby sister and struggles to earn a living by shining shoes and doing other odd jobs before his father returns. Both an American soldier and a Viet Cong regular are shown defending their country's political agenda. Also shown are guerilla tactics and bombings in this feature directed by veteran combat photographer Raoul Coutard.

The Bamboo Incident

1970

S.A.S. San Salvador poster
3.3

Enrique Chacon kills Oscar Romero, a Catholic archbishop in San Salvador. The CIA calls a special agent, Malko Linge, a ruined prince who lives with an expensive woman - Countess Alexandra - to get rid of this nuisance of a man. He does, with many encounters with sweet girls, and macho villains.

S.A.S. San Salvador

1983

Operation Leopard poster
5.7

In May 1978, the mining town of Kolwezi in Katanga, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Belgian Congo) is under attack from a group of communist guerillas coming from nearby Angola. The Europeans who work for the Belgian mining company and the Blacks who live in the town are taken as hostages by the invaders, who start a blood bath, shooting Europeans as well as Africans. Many of the Europeans being French, the French decide to organize a counter-attack, and to send a Regiment of Paratroopers from the Foreign Legion. The movie follows the stories of Delbart, a former non-commissioned officer, who was about to go back to France with his African wife and his child, Damrémont, who was Delbart's replacement, Bia, a Zairian doctor, and Annie, an American married to a Belgian engineer as well as Non com Legion officer Federico and the French Ambassador and the Military Attaché.

Operation Leopard

1980

No artwork available
NR

Young recruits in the military.

Le Défilé du 14 Juillet 1977

1977

No artwork available
NR

Young recruits in the military.

Le Défilé du 14 Juillet 1977

1977

No artwork available
NR

Made-for-TV film based on a short story by Claude Chevalier Hapert.

Une nuit en Lorraine

1975