Classic Throwback: Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

Pierrot Le Fou is considered to be a turning point in the career of Jean-Luc Godard, shooting him the direction of the highly cynical, outrageous and postmodern, especially in its parodic attitude towards American pop culture and genre conventions, which continued in films like Week End (1967). This is actually one of the few Godard films from the 60’s that his legendary cinematographer Raoul Coutard shot in Techniscope colour, and like Contempt, it is stunningly beautiful - especially in Criterion high-definition digital transfer.

Initially there is this brilliant energy to the film, but the film does slow down and become more philosophical in the latter half. Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne Renoir (Ana Karina) go on the run together and find themselves in one ridiculous circumstance after another. Ferdinand is dissatisfied with his marriage and life in general, and following an insufferable Parisian party with shallow members of the bourgeoisie, he decides to leave it all behind him, hitting the road with his ex-lover, Marianne, who was their babysitter for the night.

Having walked into Marianne’s apartment to find a deceased corpse, Ferdinand (who is given the unwelcomed nickname Pierrot) discovers that ruthless gangsters are after Marianne. When they turn up, the pair barely escapes, and though Ferdinand has a female partner and a gun (all you need to make a film), they also utilize the dead man’s car. Without remorse they burn this car (and a bag of money in the back seat) and steal another, but not before taking down a trio of gas station attendants who try to stop them.

They make for a secluded island in the French Riviera to simply ‘exist’ together. But they experience growing pains as a couple when they find that their pursuers have caught up with them. As two of Godard’s most watchable and likeable actors - Belmondo appears in Breathless, while Karina was rarely absent throughout Godard’s new wave films - they each possess individual energy and supreme acting chemistry, and give this an animated boost entirely on their own.

They are somewhat cartoonish in action. Belmondo climbs trees, reads from novels aloud, scribbles in his notebook and on several occasions has a large bird perched on his shoulder. Karina can’t keep still either. She has this hyperactive energy and is very often the instigator, but grows tired of their living situation and desires a return to town. While Karina has been incredibly sexy in each of the films I have watched in this Godard series, I don’t think any of her roles top Marianne for sexiness. The fact that the story is unpredictable (and contains blood) further enhances the experience.

Like Contempt this is another of Godard’s films where he subtly attacks Hollywood cinema while simultaneously working in a consumerist satire. He draws influence from low-culture and genres like slapstick and violent pulp crime thrillers. While I’m sure there were a plethora of references to 50’s and 60’s Hollywood cinema, most of them were lost on me. The film is a confounding and befuddling one to say the least. In response to a question about Samuel Fuller’s involvement in the film – he plays an American director at the party who explains cinema to Ferdinand, stipulating ‘emotion’ – Godard declares that “the comparison between film and a commando operation is from every point of view – financial, economic, artistic – a perfect image, a perfect symbol for film in it’s totality.’

The island’s natural beauty, the colours in Karina’s clothing (the red dress and blue pants in particular) and the intermittent blood spillage – there is plenty of ‘red’ in Pierrot Le Fou – pop from the screen. There is an early scene that features splashes of colour on the windscreen of the car they are travelling in. Greens, yellows and reds shoot across the character’s faces and works in conjunction to the coloured filters used at the party a couple of scenes before. Rather than being immersed in this consumerist life, it now only exists as brief flashes, indicative of what they are leaving behind.

Once again, and I don’t know how he does this, but each of the scenes just seem to happen as a result of chance or fate. There seems to be no order or organization, and Godard in interviews regarding the film, has described it as a completely spontaneous film (including the scoring, which was mixed without preparation). The actors move, do something odd and inexplicable, but are captured beautifully by the camera that always seems to have been tipped off, moving at the precise moment to get in frame a figure emerging from another room or a vehicle that has driven off screen, only to return.

It is a great example of Godard’s ‘cinema as happening’. Much like when Pierrot drives his car into the water, the entire film is comprised of spontaneous tangents, almost as if the events play out without a sense of order. I don’t know how to describe Godard’s skill, but it’s as if real events are being documented in an ultra-stylish way. Throughout the first half of Pierrot Le Fou I was convinced it was going to be my favourite Godard film, but as events transpired, my interest was tested, and a lot of the cultural references were lost on me. Still, this is a fantastically odd film and without doubt is one of the most radical of Godard’s career up to this point.