Pierrot le fou

"Film is like a battleground", tells Samuel Fuller Ferdinand in the beginning of this film: "Love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotion." 'Pierrot le fou' is a 110 minutes film by Godard and his tenth feature. It's roughly based on a crime novel written by Lionel White. Tho, don't expect a linear adaptation. In fact, Godard and his actors mostly improvised and therefore deliver a dodgy 'surrealeperiment'.

The plot summary therefore must be given a little superficially: It's about a wannabe writer, Ferdinand Griffon (Belmondo) who escapes his every day life and runs off with his mistress Marianne (Karina) to the Mediterranean Sea. Far away from his family, he lives for the moment, reads books and tries to work on a diary. Meanwhile, the police and Algerian killers are chasing Marianne because she has committed a murder.

Godard assembles philosophical texts with shots of posters and screens, sets in musical elements and achieves to encode his film in a very inspiring way. Sometimes the imagery is fair and beautiful (i. e. Belmondo and Karina are running along a silhouette like forest which is photographed in front of a white, flat background), sometimes odious and angry (i. e. Belmondo finds an Algerian murdered with scissors and he keeps on raking in the wound), sometimes stirringly artistic (i. e. Karina takes the murder instrument, the scissors holds it in front of a wide-angle-lens and creates an unbelievably coherent effect of distortion).

Those who take the film with a living mind will experience a fascinating, beautifully filmed love story with two protagonists who do everything within the power of their tremendous acting potential. Concerning the contents, it is a cinematic toying with the duality of the characters (Ferdinand and Pierrot or Ferdinand or Marianne) or rather with schizophrenia. Belmondo plays a mad crackpot who first has a pretty martialistic based life as a husband and father whose world view staggers because of upcoming converse feelings - personated by Karina. She, married with Godard at that time, plays the character Marianne with wit, depth and anarchic charme. Her role is the symbolic enlightenment in Ferdinands being. While he strives melancholically for wisdom and always throbs on the importance of the arts, Marianne is a lackadaisical playgirl and swinger who wants to be instead of having. Belmondo as Ferdinand shows in all of his agility a vulnerability that hides behind the same gruffness of 'Une femme est une femme'.

'Pierrot le fou' is a film that dines from various influences, having some sort of private, economic, cultural or political natures. More than every other 'auteur' Godard manifests himself once more as the chronologist of his time.

Ferdinand is a.k.a. Pierrot, but just to Marianne, as he's her beau, though he starts off with his wife, but cannot take the married strife, so he deserts her, and they form a new combo. Together they evade the OAS, it's not the first time she's been caught in such a mess, heading south to towards the sea, committing crimes, they run and flee, a small island gives them time, for their sad tryst. Marianne puts a dwarf terrorist in his place, the lost loves re-find each other, and a suitcase, it goes to pot, there are some shots, it's a Godard type of plot, and it blows up in Pierrot's sullen face.

Two great actors talking in the directors tongue but not able to communicate as legibly as you might like unless you're prepared to pay multiple visits, and I'm not really sure it's worth the time and energy.

"I've never been able to appreciate any of his films, nor even understand them... I find his films affected, intellectual, self-obsessed and, as cinema, without interest and frankly dull... I've always thought that he made films for critics." That's Ingmar Bergman openly expressing his opinion about Jean- Luc Godard's movies, his 'contempt'… to play on words.

For a novice, this statement might sound awkward from a director whose movies aren't exactly devoid of intellectual material, except that Bergman and Godard don't play in the same league, the oeuvre of Bergman is far more monumental… and substantial. Bergman approached in cinematic terms and hypnotic cinematography the human condition with a constantly questioned involvement of God, a brainstorm that spanned four decades of cinematic creation. What Godard offered is a questioning of cinematic (and storytelling) conventions, which he's entitled to do after all, except that by doing so, he confines his movies into the very cinematic medium they're supposed to free themselves out. Godard strikes like the rebellious teenage son of cinema, trying so hard to be different that it actually conditions him.

That's Godard's paradox; the man who denounced the traditional cinema is perhaps the most cinematic of all directors, always indulging to a trick, a false connection, a disenchanted voice-over, a sudden change of color and many outbursts of spontaneity within the script, to prove that he exists, that he wouldn't let any cinematic requirement affect his work, that this movie we're watching is a movie, and he's the director. Many shots are creatively done and "Pierrot le Fou", for all its craziness, is a beautifully shot movie, in fact, Godard IS a talented film-maker and some scenes are absolutely mesmerizing, I especially love the little dance between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, it captures that idle casualness, that nonchalant free-spirited charm of youth in the 60's. But for one masterstroke like this, you have countless moments where you're just wondering "what the hell am I watching?".

I know Godard is being deliberately awkward, sometimes for the sake of a gag (the film can be labeled as a comedy to some degree) or because of the "forbidding is forbidden" philosophy. But just because you do something deliberately doesn't make it any immune to criticism, it's only fair to determine to which extent the freedom of the director affects the appreciation of the story. And that's a parameter you wouldn't ignore unless you're wrapped up in a huge ego. To Godard's defense, I don't know if he held himself in such high esteem or if the cohort of fans didn't simply build the colossal monument out of his "Breathless" making any movie he'd make a masterpiece. Well, in 1965, I guess French youth was in demand of newness, something that would echo their rebellious spirit, something post- modern, and yes, I concede that "Pierrot le Fou" is far more interesting than "The Sound of Music", but that doesn't say much.

Indeed, isn't it the height of irony that the post-modern masterpiece is now stuck to its era and became the true embodiment of the "Nouvelle Vague"? To be honest, I've never been a fan of the New Wave in the first place, I thought the movies that predated its beginning like "Bob le Flambeur", "Elevator to the Gallows", "400 Blows" were more interesting than the revolution itself, but when you look retrospectively, the New Wave was only the occasion for self-absorbed directors to prove how 'different' and modern they were. Time did justice to the French popular cinema of the 50's and 60's, and people would rather watch "The Sicilian Clan", "The Wages of Fear" or any gangster flick with Gabin and Ventura than these pseudo-intellectual, flashy movies. "Pierrot le Fou" exemplifies how hard creativity could damage credibility, it's Godard at its most intrusive, and it's a shame because the story had elements to grab the viewers.

It's one of these romances on the lam with Ferdinand, a man struck in typical bourgeois ennui takes the control of his life, and escapes from his condition with Anna Karina, Belmondo has fun playing Ferdinand aka Pierrot, a role that allowed him to make a fool of himself, but Godard want to steal the actors' thunder instead of letting the two of them run the show, he uses them as puppets to the very statements he wants to make, or non-statement. I maintain that the New Wave's greatest achievement was to inspire the New Hollywood generation and when you look at "Bonnie and Clyde", "Badlands" or even "Sugarland Express", you can measure the differences between French and American cinema, one school is entrapped in its obsession with originality, another is busy telling the stories, one rejects the classics, another explores them and makes something fresh of it. Finally, one feels like cinema, one gets so experimental it's boring.

And believe me, I gave it a third chance, I put it with the commentary on, with Godard's number-one fan talking, maybe he'd tell me things I couldn't see but he actually confirmed my suspicion, in every shot, it was "Godard did", "Godard defied", "Godard changed". Godard is the real star of the film, "Pierrot le Fou" proves that he's an iconoclast, twisted and certainly talented director, he just forgot that the essence of a movie is to plunge you in a world, tell you a story and make you forget it's movie, except if the self-referential aspect is central to the plot. Not a chance with Godard, he epitomized what's wrong with the New Wave, self-awareness, self- obsession confining to intellectual masturbation, self-selfism I want to say.

The film isn't boring for all that and possesses a few moments of genuine tenderness and creativity, but Godard, once again, is being his worst enemy and destroys the very edifice he's building, for one scene that works, you have five or six leaving you scratching your head or wondering if you won't going to watch "Predator" instead.

I was fifteen when I saw this movie for the first time. I didn't knew much about cinema at this time. I didn't knew much about art either, nor music, nor nothing. But I will never forget the shock it was for me to discover that movie. This was pure poetry, it was the first time in my life I ever saw blue color, red and yellow. You don't have to be intellectual to love this movie, just a free child.

About some strange English subtitles I have on my DVD:

At the end of the movie, we can hear in French the first lines of a poem by Arthur Rimbaud (L'Eternité, 1872):

(Here I wanted to write the original french lines, but I'm not allowed. Curious world.)

English subtitles:

It's ours again / what is ? / eternity / No that's just the sea And the Sun

It should have been:

It is found again./ What is ? Eternity/ It is the sea/ Gone with the sun./

Minute 41. Ferdinand and Marianne are watching the man on the moon.

English subtitles:

F: - He thinks your legs and your breasts are very moving/ M: - Be quiet

But I can hear in French:

F: - I find your legs and your breasts very moving/ M: - Fcuk me

Artists are often remembered more for their brasher, earlier work - films, novels, paintings, etc. that pushed the boundaries of their medium to create something bold and unique. Sometimes, though, we ignore the faults of those earlier works, while more mature, more perfect later works are ignored because they lack the visceral shock of the new inherent in the artist's first pieces.

Godard strikes me as an artist of which this occurrence is particularly true. His Breathless ushered in the Nouvelle Vague of French cinema and has long been held as not only a classic, but also his masterpiece. As wonderful and fun as Breathless is, I find it much slighter Godard's later work, most notably Vivre Sa Vie, Le Mepris, Bande A Part, Weekend, and, of course, Pierrot Le Fou.

Breathless represents more technical innovation than anything else. It is a terrific story, but one that lacks the thematic depth of those other films. Godard touches upon the ideologies that will concern him later, but he does not delve into the plight of woman, the pitiful nature of the bourgeoisie, or the nature of film as much as he would in a couple years.

For me, the greatest achievement of Godard is Pierrot Le Fou. In it, he combines comedy, the road picture, extreme pathos, a scathing indictment of Capitalism, and a critique of contemporary society in an unimaginable way. The film moves along, following Ferdinand and Marianne, but any semblance of a normal narrative gets lost along the way. This is, of course, welcome. You do not come to Godard expecting the ordinary.

Though it lacks the photographic beauty of Le Mepris, Pierrot nevertheless represents one of Godard's most brilliant uses of color. The use of color filters in an early scene, reminiscent of Ivan the Terrible II's final scenes, is quite arresting and the overall use of the eastmancolor pallet is gorgeous. This is a very, very colorful film, which is appropriate for such a playful narrative.

The acting is similarly brilliant. Belmondo gives a more nuanced and more demanding performance here than he did in Breathless, and Karina matches him. Like one of the great starlets of the 40s and 50s, she bestows a grace, beauty, and elegance to her scenes. It helps that Godard's camera absolutely adores her (not quite as much, though, as it adored Brigitte Bardot's rear in Le Mepris), but much of what she does in this film derives from her talent rather than Godard's.

Again, though, I must warn that Pierrot is not a film for everyone.

Yes, it's a funny, brilliantly acted, and beautiful film, but it's also Godard, one of the most acquired tastes in the history of cinema.

That said, if you've not seen this film and consider yourself a fan of this director, see it soon - you'll not be disappointed.