For me "Pierrot le fou" (1965) is the second-most-boring movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard (born in 1930) before he discovered politics and started making dull diatribes. (The 1963 "Les Carabiniers" is even duller). My favorite Godard film (Alphaville) dates from the same year as "Pierrot le fou," and I like other Godard films from the 1960s starring Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless) and Ana Karina (Alphaville, Vivre sa vie, Le petit soldat, Bande à part, and even the vapid but colorful "Une femme est une femme" in which Belmondo also appeared).

I can cope with the lumps of undigested cultural references in early Godard movies. I know that Godard was playing with genres, though "Pierrot le fou" seems a particularly awkward mix of unthrilling gangster thriller, romantic comedy about a free spirit female and a plodding male (as in Jules Dassin's "Never on Sunday" in which Dassin played the male lead), and bits of musical (at least some songs, though nothing I'd count as "dance").

Ferdinand (Belmondo) is a bored would-be writer, married to a chic, rich Italian (Graziella Galvani). One night he leaves a party alone (his wife stays) and runs away with the babysitter, Marianne Renoir (Karina), resuming an affair from five years earlier. She kills a man in typical groteque comic book Godard style and is involved with her brother in a gun-running scheme that remains vague -- but ominous. Their stolen car has a suitcase full of money in the trunk. (Yawn...)

They hole up on the Mediterranean coast for a while, as he writes non sequiturs (OK, and some sequiturs) in his journal.

Godard obviously was more interested in bright colors than in narrative (something of a throwback to "Une femme est une femme" from the black-and-white "Le petit soldat" and "Alphaville" (both of the latter have plots that receive some attention from the director, even if style trumps content in them).

Godard and Karina were divorcing at the time and I presume that the part of Marianne has some relation to the affection and frustration Godard felt for Karina. Given what a disaster Jules Dassin was playing the foil in "Never on Sunday," I certainly don't think that Godard should have taken the role of Ferdinand. Belmondo definitely had more charisma, but he was unconvincing as an intellectual filled with cultural allusions supplied by M. Godard.

There is a movie director on screen. Back at the party that Ferdinand leaves early, Sam Fuller is there growling (in English). He says that "cinema is emotions." This certainly applies to Fuller's often overwrought melodramas, but Godard was a chilly observer of human kind even before becoming a Maoist (antihumanist). I'd say that Fuller's pronouncement is a red herring, but know that Godard cared as little for consistency and development (rather than sprinkling) of ideas as he did for narrative development (not at all).

For those interested in decoding Godard's cultural hebephrenia of the time (beyond the obvious pop art primary colors and the analysis of Velasquez that Ferdinand reads to his young daughter during her bath early in the movie) there is a whole disc of bonus features. If the movie had been more interesting, I might have wanted to view these, but clearly I was unimpressed by the movie. I don't think the fragments here make a mosaic... or a coherent statement about cinema or about anything else.

Some of the themes not particularly well developed ("touched on" would be my characterization) in "Pierrot le fou" are discussed in a more sympathetic review of "Pierrot le fou" by metalluk at http://www.epinions.com/content_183723527812.

© 2008, Stephen O. Murray




Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age