Throughout the world Jean-Luc Godard was a monument of the seventh art, venerated or sometimes reviled.
But in the Swiss village of Rolle, residents remember a discreet but always kind neighbor.
The father of the New Wave died Tuesday at the age of 91 at his home, by assisted suicide.
“
I just heard the news.
I am brewed (shaken)
”, confides Sylvie Mezzena, a neighbor of the filmmaker, who has lived for decades in the village of just over 6,000 inhabitants, nestled on the shores of Lake Geneva.
Another neighbour, Agnès Montavon, 62, stands outside the
Breathless
author's simple home and recalls how it "
made the heart beat
" a little faster every time she
she met him.
"
This death means a lot to me
,” she said.
Read the fileOUR DOSSIER - Jean-Luc Godard, the master of the New Wave
A few streets away, in front of the house of Jean-Luc Godard's wife, Anne-Marie Miéville, a black van arrived around noon and several men entered with a stretcher.
Visibly upset, she refused to speak to reporters who began to gather.
In the village, on the other hand, many of them agreed to share their memories of the legendary maverick of cinema.
Read alsoJean-Luc Godard resorted to assisted suicide
A familiar figure from Rolle
The filmmaker was well known in Rolle, where he took daily walks to buy his newspapers and frequented the cafés assiduously.
Christina Novais, who is a waitress at the Wolfisberg café, one of the places frequently haunted by the filmmaker, remembers: “
Every morning, he drank his little ristretto with plain water.
Every morning.
Sometimes it happened to him to come twice a day.
He was discreet.
He was very nice, a generous person, who left a lot of tips
”.
Read alsoDeath of Jean-Luc Godard, master of the New Wave and legend of the seventh art, at 91
It was in the cafes, where they both liked to work, that the 50-year-old social science researcher most often met the filmmaker.
“
He was very, very human, hyper-nice.
And what was funny is that he very often said hello to the dogs, he loved animals
”, remembers Sylvie Mezzena, before adding: “
He was super cute and very hardworking
”.
He often sat until late at night with colleagues, discussing costumes and makeup.
The inhabitants of Rolle have always been very protective of him, refusing to tell journalists who scoured the town where to find the famous man.
Like most people in the town, Sylvie Mezzena describes a “
discreet
” Jean-Luc Godard.
"
He really was a bear, but a nice bear
,” she says affectionately.
A man with a “
big heart
”
Gino Siconolfi, a taxi driver who has often had Godard as a client over the past 20 years, agrees.
"
He was a bit wild
," says the 57-year-old driver, but "
he was someone with a big heart.
»
The taxi remembers that his famous client could sometimes remain silent during a whole race but at other times “
he told me his whole life
”.
“
I drove it for 20 years.
I knew him well
,” says Gino Siconolfi, who even starred in his 2014 3D film
Farewell to Language
.
They "
needed a driver and a car, and asked me if I wanted to be in the film, and I said yes
", although he admits that he found his cinema "
a little special
".