2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)

Raoul Coutard passed away at 92 earlier this week. Throughout his career he became something like the official cinematographer of the French New Wave, working with the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Demy and François Truffaut. Several of his films can be seen on FilmStruck, the new streaming service launched by TCM and the Criterion Collection.

Among them is Godard’s “2 or 3 Things I Know About Her,” which serves as a template for the essay films he’s spent much of his subsequent career making: There’s no concrete narrative so much as a series of musings about myriad aspects of daily life.

Z (1969)

Coutard helped define the aesthetic of two of Costa-Gravas’ early, genre-defining political thrillers: first “Z” and then “The Confession.” The first of these focuses on the assassination of a politician whose death is passed off as a hit-and-run accident.

The Confession (1970)

Yves Montand (who also plays the assassinated politician in “Z”) stars as a communist who gets disappeared by the Soviets in his native Czechoslovakia and is then imprisoned and interrogated. Most frightening in “The Confession” is the fact that it was based on a true story from the early 1950s.

Lola (1961)

Demy’s first film takes place in his hometown of Nantes and stars Anouk Aimée as the eponymous cabaret dancer, who spurns the advances of the hopeless romantic Rolan (Marc Michel). A “musical without music,” as Demy described it, “Lola” serves as a tribute to Max Ophüls.

Weekend (1967)

Featuring what must be the most compelling traffic jam ever captured on film, “Weekend” also marked the last collaboration between Godard and Coutard for a full 15 years — they finally reunited on 1982’s “Passion.” Coutard remained highly active throughout the remainder of the decade and into the mid-’90s, shooting his final film, Philippe Garrel’s “Wild Innocence,” in 2001.