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Editor's Note
French auteur Jean-Luc Godard continues his fascination with the crime genre--after BREATHLESS and BAND OF OUTSIDERS--with PIERROT LE FOU. After escaping his stale, bourgeois marriage, Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a man on the run, encounters a captivating woman, Marianne (Godard's then-wife, Anna Karina). Striking up an immediate connection, the two begin a freewheeling affair that leads them to the Mediterranean Sea. There's one slight problem, though. Marianne is being pursued by a group of bloodthirsty mobsters who have chased her out of Algeria. Making matters worse for Ferdinand is the unfortunate fact that she turns out to be as much of a headache as his wife was, constantly referring to him as "Pierrot," much to his disdain. As their relationship reaches its boiling point, the hit men arrive, threatening to terminate both their relationship and their lives. Based on Lionel White's OBSESSION, PIERROT LE FOU is an example of a filmmaker's lack of preparation actually working to his benefit. Godard has said that he had no script on which to proceed, forcing him to make up the film as he went along. It is this seemingly improvised, brisk pacing--in addition to the performances of Belmondo and Karina--that makes the film such a fresh and original twist on an oft-mimicked genre.
| Features | Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeoisie behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard's tenth feature in six years is a stylish mash-up of consumerist satire, politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, "the last romantic couple." With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, Pierrot le fou is one of the high points of the French new wave, and one last frolic before Godard moved ever further into radical cinema. |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
|  | Studio: CRITERION COLLECTION |
| Release Date: 9/22/2009 |
| Running Time: 110 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1965 | | UPC: 00715515050111 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Video: Color |
| Cast & Crew
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| | Professional Reviews | Los Angeles Times
"Godard here goes a step further by insisting that the viewer always be aware that it is fantasy he or she is watching. It's a stance that pays off in layered meanings and intricate implications." 08/10/2007Entertainment Weekly
"Jean-Luc Godard's long-unavailable road movie is the most visually dazzling film to emerge from the French New Wave." -- Grade: A- 02/22/2008 p.80 Sight and Sound
"[I]t's the push and pull between a profoundly felt classicism and the ephemeral sense of immediacy that makes this apparently ad hoc offering such a full meal." 05/01/2008 p.98 |
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