Published by ANSA, Italian director Gianni Amelio gave a heartfelt interview, paying tribute to the iconic French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, who died yesterday by assisted suicide at 91 years of age.

Amelio, whose Il Signore delle Formiche premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is currently the top grossing film in Italy - the first Italian production to achieve this feat in months - halted promotion of his own work to wax lyrical on the genius of his idol.

“Every shot of Godard’s is worthy of cinema", stressed Amelio.

"When I was 14 years old, I saw Breathless, it was a thunderbolt, I owe my passion for cinema to him. But I am not the only one, there are dozens and dozens of directors who consider that film, and Godard, to be their motivational drive.

“Godard is a revolutionary of cinema- the very idea of cinema, such a new way of conceiving it. Our current concept of cinema wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for him. He was a progenitor."    

With this profound sense of admiration for Godard, choosing a favourite film from the catalogue of the iconoclastic rebel auteur proved to be quite the challenge for Amelio.

"Godard lives in the entirety of his cinema, in the first films, those of the New Wave, but also in his later period, more as an essayist- he always has something to tell us."

"Each more or less beautiful, every work of his tells us something, about emotion, linked perhaps to our most personal moments.”    

The late Jean-Luc Godard. (Photo: AAP)

Amelio is a true connoisseur of the Parisian director, and recalls the master’s free-wheeling spirit, militant and radical though he was:

"He was the least demanding and most helpful person. In his career, he never made compromises but choices, like when he worked with the great producer Carlo Ponti on Contempt, with Brigitte Bardot and Michelle Piccoli. He took into account that there could have been disagreements, and indeed there were.

“Contempt is a perfect film, but the Italian version is 20 minutes shorter, and features improbable dubbing. He didn't make any petty protests as some directors would have done over here."    

A precious anecdote recounted by Amelio speaks volumes about Godard's character.

"At Venice in '64, someone within the festival’s management was scandalized by certain shots in A Married Woman. Godard said, ‘get me a pair of scissors’ and went to the booth to make cuts to the incriminated frames, a gesture that shows us how he was not at the low ebb of others, no one was his equal. Let's think for a moment what would happen today in that case?”    

On what remains of the director’s work, what his greatest lessons are:

"It is not the craft, beyond Godard's language and images there remains the morality of cinema that passes through aesthetics and that will not die. I will continue to consider him alive, in my opinion he is now standing in the back, in the last place of the Cinematèque in Paris, with his thick glasses, in front of a film."