This is really miserable news. I never thought I'd see the day when a Godard film couldn't get released.
American audiences used to turn out in large numbers for foreign films and demanded that the foreign film be screened in its native language with English subs. That's when film goers were intensely interested in foreign films. But audiences have changed. People no longer line up around the block to see a foreign film the way they did for Ingmar Bergman or Francois Truffaut or Jean Luc Godard. Foreign language films only play in a few major cities now, if they get released in the USA at all, and generally perform poorly at the box-office. In the mid-1980s I went to a repertory theater in San Diego to see double-features -- Persona with Hour of the Wolf, The Seventh Seal with Wild Strawberries, 81/2 with Juliet of the Spirits, 400 Blows with Shoot the Piano Player, a restoration of The Leopard, and each time the house was packed. Not many people would turn out for that today.
Godard is a living legend. His films have had a profound impact on culture all over the world. His importance to cinema can't be gauged in terms of nickels and dimes. It's tragic he's outlasted his audience.
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