Several months after my Profile of Jean-Luc Godard appeared in the magazine in late 2000, my home phone rang. I trembled, first with admiration and surprise when the caller identified himself as Ricky Leacock, and then with shock and shame when he told me, “I’ve read your article, and you know nothing about Godard. You believe the myth.” I responded that I’d be grateful if he’d tell me the truth. After a few minutes of questioning and answering and jousting, he shifted gears like a race-car driver and invited me to call him when I got to Paris so that he could correct my ignorance over a dinner that he would prepare. “Well, call me. I’ll feed you,” he said.
Richard Leacock—who died today at the age of eighty-nine—is one of the most important documentary filmmakers ever, because he understood, profoundly, the implications of his materiel and sought to expand the range of the medium by shooting in synchronous sound at a time when such a thing was not done. (He contributed a lively chronicle of his work to his Wikipedia entry.) He got his start as a teen-ager, filming a documentary at his family’s farm on the Canary Islands, which got him hired by Robert Flaherty to assist on “Louisiana Story.” His inspired use of direct sound resulted, very quickly, in a batch of documentaries that felt like no others, in their immediacy and their seeming penetration of the inner life of public figures. His documentaries “Primary” and “Crisis” (made with Robert Drew and others) reveal the intimate world of politics in a way that presages the modern world of instant and constant video, but do so with an analytical grip on the material that’s as steady as it is unobtrusive.
And the Godard connection? Leacock and his business partner, the equally crucial documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker, distributed Godard’s “La Chinoise” in the U.S. and did very well with it. But they also brought Godard here in 1968, under the aegis of their production company, to make a film that was to be televised on the public-broadcasting precursor to PBS, called “One A.M.” (One American Movie); the film was shot (including in New York, where Jefferson Airplane performed on the roof of the Schuyler Hotel on West 45th Street and Godard filmed them from the production company’s window across the street—until a crowd gathered in the street and the police put a stop to the show). But, when the shoot was done, Godard then decided not to complete the film, and Leacock-Pennebaker were financially responsible for the non-delivery. (To salvage something, Pennebaker completed the film, as “One P.M.”—One Parallel Movie.)
And the dinner? Ricky and his wife, Valérie Lalonde, welcomed me warmly and fed me royally, and we talked about matters Godardian and many others besides. Ricky and I dined again together soon thereafter, and he showed me some marvellous work—“Jazz Dance,” which he shot in 1954, a film that was made at a club and during the filming of which, he told me, he “fell in love every five minutes”; and some footage he had recently shot in Russia of a pianist performing Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. I hear his voice in my head and recall his manner—grand and tender, gruff and warm-hearted, worldly-wise and intensely curious, profane and reverent—with great affection and his generous sharing of his experience and wisdom with profound gratitude. My condolences to Valérie, to his daughter Victoria (whom I also had the privilege of meeting), and to his entire family.
