Musashi94
Godard films can be broken into two periods: before Pierrot le Fou and after Pierrot le Fou. Before, the French iconoclast was still somewhat concerned with narrative coherence; afterwards, not so much. As such, Pierrot le Fou occupies an interesting spot in his filmography as it bridges the two periods. It has a conventional plot like his earlier work, but the style is much closer to the experimental efforts that comprise the vast majority of his post-1965 output. So how does it all fit together?The narrative here is very flimsy: out protagonist Ferdinand just sort of gets swept along with Marianne's cross-country crime spree without much in the way of explanation after two brief scenes of conversation. This is not atypical for Godard, but even here we're given little justification for why the characters do anything. Ferdinand is apparently dissatisfied with his bourgeoisie lifestyle which is conveyed solely by a rather bizarre party sequence while Marianne is just a whirlwind in human form.Once the characters are on the road, the plot starts and stops randomly with plenty of scenes consisting of characters sitting around and talking about sophisticated things, a Godardian trademark. But there are also several scenes of the duo just messing around. Of the later, there is a rather offensive scene where Marianne and Ferdinand put on a skit about the Americans' current involvement in Vietnam. Marianne wears what is essentially yellow-face, Ferdinand garbles out something in broken English and the message basically boils down to "Americans are violent buffoons." I don't take offense at anti-Americanism per say (a lot of it is deserved) so much as the presentation of it and this particular scene feels crude and childish.Eventually the narrative develops into a plot involving gangsters pursuing the duo and Marianne betraying Ferdinand by running away with her real boyfriend. It just feels tacked on. Given Godard shot the whole film with no script, it's not exactly surprising and this incoherence seems to be intentional. I can't really say I'm a fan however. Nonetheless, the ending, where Ferdinand paints his face blue and blows himself up only to regret it at the last moment, is very well done and rightfully remains one of the French New Wave's most iconic moments.Stylistically the film is also a mixed bag. On the positive end of things, the film looks gorgeous. Rarely have I seen colors look so vibrant and as expressive as I've seen here. On the other hand, the dialogue gets repetitive very quickly, Ferdinand says some iteration of "My name is Ferdinand" after Marianne calls him Pierrot close to a dozen times which gets annoying. The breaking of the fourth wall, while cute at first, gets tiresome the more Godard does it. The cutaways to Ferdinand's poetry are also rather irritating especially since it adds nothing to the film unless you're fluent in French.Overall, Pierrot le Fou is a rather messy blending of Godard's narrative and experimental styles that has some nice highlights to it, but can be a bit of a slog to get through unless you just happen to really love Godard and the French New Wave. I personally enjoy the visual aspects of the film but the cerebral parts of it ended up leaving me cold. Even so, it's still entertaining enough for me to give it a hesitantly positive rating.
fedor8
And not just any mental patients but French ones.A great gift to all hipsterdom, just as any Godard film is. After all, isn't it hipsters that need Belmondo to tell them that "life is a mystery even when you know where you're going and who you are"? Hipsters don't know stuff like that, you see, so they watch these pretentious but ultimately intellectually shallow films to tell them this kind of stuff. Hipsters are like little children unaware of the world that surrounds them, confused by the tinniest things (no, not pensive: I mean confused), but instead of actually learning about their environment they prefer to be reminded time and time again how confusing and mysterious it is by Godard, Bergman and all the other con-artists who just love injecting their silly films with aimless fortune-cookie wisdom. Give a hipster a fortune cookie and he will discard it with pseudo-intellectual contempt. Give that same hipster the exact same fortune-cookie within the context of a hipster movie and he eats it up like a juicy hamburger.The difference between an American and a Frenchman doing a Bonnie & Clyde type of story is that the American doesn't expect you to identify and sympathize with the sociopath couple. (Unless he is Oliver Stone.) Godard is such a demented, pompous little "poet" that you just know he condones the couple's behaviour, and I mean fully. He is absolutely in love with their anarchy, nihilism and sociopathy. (He's a left-winger, after all, they love evil – which is ironic since they don't believe it exists.) Of course, Godard might have second thoughts if they stole HIS car, took HIS money; then again, the godards of this world don't think that deeply: they only ever scratch the surface, which is oh-so romantic. As the girl says: "isn't there thought in emotion?" No, there friggin' isn't, you onion-smelling fruitcake. Romanticism and its child-like love-affair with emotion are the reason we eventually received that divine gift called Marxism that killed at least 100 million people and ruined the lives of 10 times that much. It's the pompous and delusional cloud-9 pseudo-intellectual clowns such as Godard that make the work and mission of ISIS so much easier. The more such buffoons we have (hipsters) the easier lunatics will get to lop off all of our heads. (I believe that hipsters secretly want to have their heads lopped off. The self-loathing ninnies are misfit losers.)Still, the movie is semi-fun to watch (the first half), if nothing because it was nicely shot. There's no hand-held camera poop, no ugly mono-colours, no lack of music. This was the 60s, after all, decades before the leader of the New Wave Of European Hipsterism started raping the cinema world. Lars von Trier, you dope, I'm talking about you. The scenery is quite nice, and for once a French movie features an attractive leading lady, which is even more incredible than Belmondo's fanciful story about Moon's sole inhabitant. Godard has his ass so far up his head… No, let me start over. Godard has his head so far up his ass that he sees nothing embarrassing about a road-movie psycho writing a journal into which he injects stale New French Wave poetry. Or pottery, as the Pythons would say. You know the deal: random words and musings piled together. I can only imagine what a stuck-up, arrogant bastard Godard must have been to actually do this. The balls this tiny man must have had to be so openly and unabashedly pretentious, without fearing ridicule. Not ridicule from hipsters, of course, but from intelligent people, you know, non-hipsters, who can smell horse-manure from miles away. Whenever Belmondo looks at the viewer, we just go "oh no, there he goes – he's gonna preach again!" Or say some non-sequitor that in hipster logic actually has a connection to the plot or the characters. The last thing I need is actors looking at me with a dumb glare. You're not being smart, Luc, just silly.The humour never works. After all, this is a French movie. The most embarrassing attempt at failed comedy is the Vietnam War scene in which Bonnie impersonates a Vietnamese woman. As much as self-loathing U.S. hipsters adore any criticism or mockery of their own nation, how are these politically-correct modern-day hippies ever going to look past that? Oh, but I forget: it's OK to mock Orientals, it just isn't acceptable to make fun of blacks. That's the no-no line a hipster will never cross. Blacks are the protected species, never Orientals. Who's the racist now?How about "tourists are modern-day slaves"? Man, Godard, you were wise beyond your height. That's the stupidest and the most blatantly left-wing thing I've heard in the movie. Also, what appears to be Godard's hatred of Hollywood is just a thinly-veiled extension of his predictable anti-Americanism. So this "great artist" resorts to being just another cheesy French stereotype who hates Americans? Ts ts ts, not very unique or artistic at all. Godard's laughable, amateurish, hate-filled depiction of U.S. sailors is about as accurate as Criswell's predictions that people will colonize Mars by 1988. Through this one scene (not to mention his entire filmography) Godard reveals a shoulder-chip that's the size of his Ego – and that's one damn big chip.So how does a typical hipster watch this film? For example, when Belmondo says some meaningless drivel such as "we have reached the age of man and his double". The hipster goes "yes, wow, so profound!". Ask the hipster what it means, and he'll have to first think hard – and THEN give you some gobbledygook answer that waxes poetic, spinning even bigger nonsense out of the quote.The movie disintegrates in the second half. That whole midget sub-plot is just random writing, totally pointless.
davikubrick
Nouvelle Vague is one of the most famous movements in film history and Jean-Luc Godard is one of the most famous of this movement, he directed classics as Bande à Part and Vivre sa Vie, but his possibly best movie might be Pierrot le Fou. Ferdinand decides to escape of his boring life with Marianne, a young woman being chased by mafia of Algeria. Godard shows all the virtues of society and how society and its values are limited in a original and fun way, the film gets stronger colors and some music scenes with the arrival of the character Marianne, both of their lives becomes dangerous and adventurous. The cinematography of this movie is beautiful,constantly with strong colors. The performances are okay, Anna Karina does a good work to represent Marianne, and Jean-Paul Belmondo is okay. The directing of this movie is great and the script is also great. The only bigger problem with this film is its length. "Pierrot le Fou" is a excellent movie by Jean-Luc Godard and high possibly his best.
