As he continued to work for '' Cahiers '' , he made '' Une femme coquette '' ( 1955 ) , a 10-minute short , in Geneva ; and in January 1956 he returned to Paris . A plan for a feature film of Goethe 's '' Elective Affinities '' proved too ambitious and came to nothing . Truffaut enlisted his help to work on an idea he had for a film based on the true-crime story of a petty criminal , Michel Portail , who had shot a motorcycle policeman and whose girlfriend had turned him in to the police , but Truffaut failed to interest any producers . Another project with Truffaut , a comedy about a country girl arriving in Paris , was also abandoned . He worked with Rohmer on a planned series of short films centering on the lives of two young women , Charlotte and Véronique ; and in the autumn of 1957 , Pierre Braunberger produced the first film in the series , '' All the Boys Are Named Patrick '' , directed by Godard from Rohmer 's script . '' Une histoire d'eau '' ( 1958 ) was created largely out of unused footage shot by Truffaut . In 1958 , Godard , with a cast that included Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anne Colette , made his last short before gaining international prominence as a filmmaker , '' Charlotte et son Jules '' , an homage to Jean Cocteau . The film was shot in Godard 's hotel room on the rue de Rennes and apparently reflected something of the ' romantic austerity ' of Godard 's own life at this time . His Swiss friend Roland Tolmatchoff noted ; " In Paris he had a big Bogart poster on the wall and nothing else . " In December 1958 , Godard reported from the Festival of Short Films in Tours and praised the work of , and became friends with , Jacques Demy , Jacques Rozier , and Agnès Varda — he already knew Alain Resnais whose entry he also praised — but Godard now wanted to make a feature film . He travelled to the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and asked Truffaut to let him use the story on which they had collaborated in 1956 , about the car thief Michel Portail . He sought money from the producer Georges de Beauregard whom he had met previously whilst working briefly in the publicity department of Twentieth Century Fox 's Paris office , and who was also at the Festival . Beauregard could offer his expertise , but was in debt from two productions based on Pierre Loti stories and so financing came instead from a film distributor , René Pignières
1959 Cannes Film Festival
1959 Cannes Film Festival
Jean-Luc Godard