Pierrot Le Fou

Jean-Paul Belmondo Director: Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard

Overview

Pierrot le fou (1965) is Jean-Luc Godard's sixth film staring Anna Karina, his first wife. It is the story of Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Karina). They meet when Ferdinand's wife hires Marianne as a baby-sitter. As he drives Marianne home, Ferdinand decides to run away with her. The couple get caught up in a mysterious gun-running scheme involving Marianne's brother (Dirk Sanders). With Pierrot le fou Godard returns to the story of A bout de souffle (Breathless): the tale of a couple on the run. But in the six years between the two films Godard developed a more complex and often difficult style. Pierrot le fou incorporates musical numbers, references to the history of cinema and painting, and quotations from literature. The film features Godard's most extended use of color to that point, as the shots are filled with blocks of bright primary colors. Pierrot le fou is a catalogue of cinematic inventions and of gestures made by couples in love.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/06/2020
UPC:	0715515241212
Original Release:	1965
Source:	Criterion Collection
Presentation:	[Color]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono, Dolby Digital Stereo]
Time:	1:50:00
Sales rank:	6,308

Special Features

New 2k digital restoration; Interview from 2007 with actor Anna Karina; A "Pierrot" Primer, a video essay from 2007 written and narrrated by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin; Godard, l'amour, la poesie, a fifty-minute 2007 French documentary by Luc Lagier, about Director Jean-Luc Godard and his work with and marriage to Karina; Excerpts of interviews from 1965 with Godard, Karina, and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo; Trailer; Plus: An essay by critic Richard Brody

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jean-Paul Belmondo	Ferdinand Griffon, "Pierrot"
Anna Karina	Marianne Ronoir
Dirk Sanders	Fred, Marianne's Brother
Raymond Devos	Man on the Pier
Graziella Galvani	Ferdinand's Wife
Roger Dutoit	Gangster
Princess Aicha Abidir	Herself
Pierre Hanin	3rd Brother
Krista Nell	Mme. Staquet
Alexis Poliakoff	Sailor
Laszlo Szabo	Political Exile from Santo Domingo
Samuel Fuller	Himself
Hans Meyer	Gangster
Jimmy Karoubi	Dwarf
Jean-Pierre Léaud	Young Man in Movie Theatre
Pascal Aubier	2nd Brother

Technical Credits

Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard	Director,Screenwriter
Boris Bassiak	Songwriter
Francoise Collin	Editor
Raoul Coutard	Cinematographer
Georges de Beauregard	Producer
Antoine Duhamel	Score Composer
Pierre Guffroy	Art Director
Jean-Pierre Léaud	Asst. Director
René Levert	Sound/Sound Designer

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- Pierrot le Fou - The Film
255. Chapters
1. Ferdinand [5:32]
2. Cocktail Party [4:44]
3. Marianne Renoir [4:43]
4. Breakfast In Bed [4:08]
5. "A Story, All Mixed Up" [3:16]
6. Laurel and Hardy [4:14]
7. Stories and Accidents [5:13]
8. Crossing France [2:26]
9. '62 Ford Galaxie [6:20]
10. Riviera [3:50]
11. Perfect Happiness [6:57]
12. Sick Of It [4:52]
13. Play For The Americans [2:12]
14. "My Fate Line" [:17]
15. Small World [5:39]
16. Call From Marianne [4:19]
17. Despair [6:57]
18. The Princess and Pierrot [3:40]
19. Going To Meet Fred [5:41]
20. Crazy Setup [4:51]
21. "Do You Love Me?" [7:18]
22. Eternity [5:54]
1. Color Bars [7:31]
Disc #2 -- Pierrot le Fou - The Supplements
1. "Like A Gift" [1:51]
2. "We Knew What He Wanted" [4:46]
3. Singing In Films [2:39]
4. Big Cheese and Bowling [3:07]
5. A Modern Film [1:52]
1. "A, B, And C Of It" [1:10]
2. Quotes [2:49]
3. Conjugation [2:05]
4. Godardian Cool [2:08]
5. Exposition And Graphics [2:19]
6. Classicism [2:20]
7. The Pierrot Machine [2:50]
8. "An Impossible Scene" [2:51]
9. Punctuation [2:02]
10. Voodoo of Childhood [1:43]
11. Musical Design [2:01]
12. Time Suspended [5:57]
13. Homage To Anna Karina [2:58]
14. "Expect The Unexpected" [2:41]
0. Chapters
1. Chapter 1 [9:21]
0. Chapters
1. Chapter 1 [3:58]
1. Godard Before Karina [8:53]
2. Anna [1:40]
3. Le Petit Soldat [9:04]
4. A Woman Is A Woman [4:58]
5. Vivre Sa Vie [8:17]
6. Contempt [7:17]
7. Alphaville [3:58]
8. Pierrot Fe Fou [8:45]

Menu

Disc #1 -- Pierrot le Fou - The Film
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Disc #2 -- Pierrot le Fou - The Supplements
   The Supplements
      Anna Karina
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         Index
      A Pierrot Primer
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      Belmondo In The Wind
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      Venice Film Festival, 1965
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      Godard, L'Amour, La Poésie
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Editorial Reviews

Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou is many things -- none of which you can quite put your finger on. A giddy thriller, a political polemic masquerading as a musical, a love story that’s also a discourse on art; this 1965 masterpiece finds its fabled director just about to ford the stream to where radical politics, and equally radical film form, take precedence over relative accessibility. Not that Pierrot hand-holds the viewer. As was his manner in the first near-decade of his career, Godard indulges freely in the elliptical, the outrageously cartoonish, and the didactic, breaking the illusionary Fourth Wall with impunity. Plot becomes secondary to the disparate musings of the director as voiced by his filmic counterparts, the glorious duo of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, Godard’s wife at the time. Saturated in bombastically beautiful color by way of Raoul Coutard’s eye-popping cinematography, Pierrot, and the following year’s Masculin/Feminine, cap off an audacious run of signature Godard works that commenced with the big bang of Breathless in 1959. Very much of its time -- critical jabs at the Vietnam War and American cultural and economic imperialism run rampant throughout -- Pierrot is simultaneously an irreverent, riotously funny critique of bourgeois life and an elemental, poignant account of a relationship running into the ground. No wonder Godard’s early work remains the template for contemporary directors who still gaze in wonder at how effortlessly he kept so many balls in the air at once, all the while giving the appearance that he was improvising the whole shoot on the fly. Admire Tarantino and his ilk all you will, but never overlook the daddy of them all.

Barnes & Noble - Steve Futterman

Based on Lionel White's novel Obsession, Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965) transforms a story about a couple on the run into an existential romance and an essay on the possibilities of film. With no script, Jean-Paul Belmondo's and Anna Karina's flight to southern France becomes a spontaneous series of incidents that reflect on romance, aesthetics, story-telling, and art as an antidote to alienation. Equating men with the intellect and women with the body, and using the widescreen frame to emphasize the couple's psychic division, Godard unites them in romantic moments and musical numbers, but these gestures cannot prevent their final, explosive separation. Stylized colors and compositions celebrate art for art's sake (even though the colors also carry potential meaning), as in the repetition of the couple's response to a murder in three different shooting styles. Allusions to other films, the brief appearance of Hollywood tough-guy director Samuel Fuller, and references to writers, writing, and painters all emphasize Godard's concern with the meaning of cinema and art, and their place in life. Though not as popular as its predecessor Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou won the Critics' Prize at the 1965 Venice Film Festival, and it was a key precursor to his most radical 1960s film, Weekend (1968).

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola

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