Pierrot le fou

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Jean-Paul Belmondo (Ferdinand Griffon), Anna Karina (Marianne Renoir), Graziella Galvani (Mrs. Griffon), Dirk Sanders (Fred), Raymond Devos (Man on pier), Roger Dutoit (Gangster), Hans Meyer (Gangster)
MPAA Rating: NR
Year of Release: 1965
Country: France
Pierrot le Fou Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Pierrot le fou

Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou was the prolific writer-director’s tenth film in seven years, and it cemented a pronounced shift in his cinematic sensibilities that had been in a constant state of evolution since he exploded onto the international stage with Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1960), one of several sparks that fully set the French New Wave ablaze. Throughout the 1960s he had experimented with Hollywood conventions like genre (science fiction, musicals, crime films), color, and widescreen, as well as the star system (his 1963 film Le Mépris starred Brigitte Bardot). He was also beginning to move toward a more radically disjunctive form of cinema, moving past Breathless’s jump cuts and genre revisionism into a terrain marked by direct address, fragmented narrative, and experimental mixtures of imagery, words, and diegetic collapse, all of which was fueled by his growing political sensibilities. Pierrot le fou is the gateway that would eventually lead to his “essay films” Masculin Féminin (1966) and Made in U.S.A. (1966) and his crowning masterpiece, Weekend (1967), elements of which are clearly evident here.

Reunited with his Breathless and A Woman is a Woman (Une femme est une femme, 1961) star Jean-Paul Belmondo, who, in Andrew Sarris’s words, has a “too-many-drinks-and-cigarettes-the-night-before-this-morning face” (he looks demonstrably older than 34), Godard riffs on Obsession, a noir-ish 1962 novel by the American crime writer Lionel White, whose Clean Break was earlier adapted by Stanley Kubrick as The Killing (1956) and who Quentin Tarantino posthumously credited as an inspiration for Reservoir Dogs (1992). Godard leaves most of White’s plot in the dust as he spins a wild and improbable lovers-on-the-run tale that is as genuinely romantic as it ironically detached. It is, like so many of Godard’s best works, a paradox that forces you to constantly engage and think and question what you’re watching. Belmondo plays Ferdinand Griffon, a bored husband, father, and aspiring artist who ditches his staid Parisian life to run off with the family babysitter, Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend. They take off without much of a plan, which is kind of how the film feels, as well: improvised, spontaneous, made-up along the way. There is both rhyme and reason, but not in the ways that you would typically expect. At various moments the film turns into a musical; at other times it plays like a standard criminals-on-the-lam road movie; and at other points it detours into political theater, absurdist satire, and Brechtian distanciation.

That makes the film sound like a mess, and, in a way, it is—a uniquely Godardian mess, which means that you can sense the order through the chaos, even if you can’t always put your finger on what, exactly, Godard is after at any given moment. Much of his work is usefully understood via a response he gave to a question posed by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel in 1968: “I think you are looking for too many explanations for things, too many comments about things, but they are just there. There is nothing to explain.”

What we can know for sure, though, is how gorgeous the film looks (the cinematography is by Raoul Coutard, who shot virtually all of Godard’s early films, as well most of François Truffaut’s). Saturated in garish primary hues that give each frame the look and feel of a comic book panel, Pierrot le fou is a love letter to the visual arts, and Godard suffuses the film with insert shots of paintings from Renoir and Picasso, as well as pop art, magazine advertisements and billboards, and neon signs. The film is dominated by Crayola tones of bright red, sky blue, and stark white, and even when the film turns dark (such as when Ferdinand is being waterboarded in a bathtub by a trio of gun-toting heavies with whom Marianne is criminally involved), we are always aware of the underlying theatrics.

Belmondo and Karina are so glorious in their zeal for life outside the rules that we forgive and forget how nothing in the story holds together—not that it’s intended to. Godard excels in sequences, rather than stories, and he puts together some fantastic images, including Belmondo and Karina driving a car into the ocean, an amusing bit of cat-and-mouse around a vehicle they’re trying to steal off a lift, and plenty of open-air French countryside and the beach, the film’s go-to representations of escape from stifling conformity. When there is violence, it is cartoonish in its gruesomeness (for some reason, numerous character meet their demise via scissors in the neck), although the film’s numerous references to Vietnam remind us of the actual cost of conflict.

Godard seems to be in love with the idea of love while simultaneously being wary of its lures and traps (his marriage to Karina was disintegrating at the time), which is perhaps why the film vacillates so wildly between romanticism and cynicism, propping its outlaw heroes up as “the last romantic couple” while also sending them down the path of annihilation. Pierrot le fou is nowhere near as apocalyptic in its fatalism as Weekend, but in virtually every frame you can sense Godard leaning more and more heavily in that direction, as the weight of the world and its injustices and absurdities push harder and harder against his love of all things cinematic.

Pierrot le fou Criterion Collection Blu-ray

Aspect Ratio2.35:1
Audio
  • French Linear PCM 1.0 monaural
  • SubtitlesEnglish
    Supplements
  • Video interview with actor Anna Karina from 2007
  • A “Pierrot” Primer, a video essay from 2007 written and narrated by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin
  • Godard, l’amour, la poésie, a 50-minute French documentary from 2007, directed by Luc Lagier, about director Jean-Luc Godard and his work and marriage with Karina
  • Excerpts of interviews from 1965 with Godard, Karina, and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo
  • Trailer
  • Essay by critic Richard Brody, along with (Blu-ray only) a 1969 review by Andrew Sarris and a 1965 interview with Godard
  • DistributorThe Criterion Collection
    SRP$39.95
    Release DateOctober 6, 2020

    COMMENTS
    Criterion’s presentation of Pierrot le fou features the same 2K digital scan of the original 35mm camera negative that was used for Studio Canal’s 2010 Blu-ray (it is, therefore, despite claims on the cover, not really a “new” transfer). The liner notes mention that the transfer from Criterion’s two-disc DVD set from 2007 and subsequent 2009 Blu-ray, which was supervised and approved by now-deceased cinematographer Raoul Coutard, was used as a color reference, although there are two substantive changes from Criterion’s previous transfer that match with the Studio Canal disc. First, a shot of Ferdinand and Marianne sleeping on the ground has been corrected to have a day-for-night filter on it, whereas on the previous transfer it was clearly daylit. The second change is more controversial: During the party scene at the beginning of the film in which each shot is heavily filtered with a strong hue (red, blue, yellow), there is one shot in which Ferdinand speaks with director Samuel Fuller that has no filter. The previous Criterion discs that were approved by Coutard had the shot filtered green, whereas other releases of the film (including Studio Canal’s 2010 Blu-ray) presented the shot with no filter. Apparently, Criterion has determined that the shot should not be filtered green, because it is now full-color, although interestingly a still from it is used on the inside of the slip cover—and it is tinted green! It would seem that, given that Coutard approved the green tint back in 2007, that is the correct presentation, but Roger Ebert’s review from 1966 makes specific note of the shot not being tinted when he saw it theatrically. So … there you go. Otherwise, this is an uncontroversial presentation. Beautifully framed in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, Pierrot le fou looks outstanding, giving the pop-art blues, reds, and whites a ravishing density and purity. There is a great deal of detail and depth throughout along with a fine layer of evident grain. Some wide shots seem just a bit soft, but it doesn’t take away from the film’s visual power. The original monaural soundtrack has been remastered from the 35mm optical soundtrack positive and is presented in a clean Linear PCM track.

    In terms of supplements, we get all the same great stuff that was included on the 2007 DVD and the 2009 Blu-ray: “A Pierrot Primer,” a 36-minute video essay with commentary by filmmaker and Godard collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin, who speaks eloquently in English; Godard, l’amour, la poésie, a 53-minute documentary about Godard’s career and his relationship with Anna Karina; a circa-2007 15-minute video interview with Karina conducted at the Brasserie Lipp in Paris; 10 minutes of interviews with Godard and Karina discussing their work with actor Jean-Paul Belmondo in excerpts from a 1965 program “Belmondo in the Wind,” which aired on French television as part of the series Panorama; four minutes of footage from the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival footage, including excerpted interviews with Godard and Karina; and a thick insert booklet that includes the same 2007 essay by critic Richard Brody, a 1969 review by Andrew Sarris, and a 1965 interview with Godard.

    Copyright © 2020 James Kendrick

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    All images copyright © The Criterion Collection

    Overall Rating: (3.5)




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