W hen Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature, Breathless , exploded on to cinema screens in 1960, it was heralded as an instant classic. However, his directorial career did not start with Breathless, but rather five years earlier with Operation Concrete, a remarkable documentary with an even more poignant backstory.

In 1953, when Godard’s mother, Odile, sent him to work as a labourer on the construction of the Grande Dixence dam in the canton of Valais, Switzerland , it represented a desperate last throw of the dice for her wayward 22-year-old kleptomaniac son.

Godard had returned to Switzerland to avoid being drafted into the Indochina war, but quickly found himself in trouble again. “He had this long period of repeated adolescent bad behaviour that his family had indulged but which event

See Full Page