Raoul Coutard was camera-person on nearly all Godard’s major 1960s films, including Á bout de souffle, Bande à Part, Le Mépris, Alphaville, La Chinoise, and Weekend, and then some later films Passion, Prénom Carmen. After the second imperialist war, so in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Coutard was a member of the French far eastern Corps Expeditionnaire and director of photography for Indochina, a map-maker in the Geographical Division, and even a war correspondent for Life and Paris Match – he was at Dien Bien Phu before it fell [I would nevertheless be keen to see his photographs from there if they exist – there is a book of his other Vietnam images, somewhat exoticist, ‘Le Même soleil’, and apparently a huge collection of unsorted images, but its not yet clear just where all these are from – I am on the case, but I expect it takes much time to be reinvented as a picture researcher].
This below is the first of over 170 fascinating short anecdotes from him that amount to an incredible interview/autobiography – problematic jokes and deep insights jumbled together, each one is 2 to 4 minutes, so the entire thing is well worth the couple of hours needed.
Web of Stories – Life Stories of Remarkable People
Raoul Coutard – Family (1/179)
Trinketization 