Once in a while, a lost film appears, delighting film buffs and historians. In the past few years, we’ve seen a lost Méliès film, a Hitchcock, and a Star Wars-related short all turn up after decades of absence. But this weekend, someone uploaded the Holy Grail: Jean-Luc Godard’s first narrative film.
Une Femme Coquette (embedded above) was suddenly and unexpectedly uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday. Although it’s not a masterwork, it’s enormously historically significant. As The A.V. Club‘s Ignatiy Vishnevetsky says, you can see some of Godard’s early tics and style that would eventually become influential in the French New Wave.
We’re stunned that more and more films continue to be unearthed, especially such important ones. Come on, The Day the Clown Cried!