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.

There is a scene I simply love in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou, so much so that I'd say it's one of my favorite scenes I have yet to see in any Godard film next to the lengthy tracking-shot in Weekend. The scene comes early on in the film and shows our two criminal leads Ferdinand (nicknamed "Pierrot," played by Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Anna Karina) driving along with news on one-hundred and fifteen guerillas being killed. It is then that Marianne states how inherently dehumanizing that statement is to the one-hundred and fifteen victims simply because we don't think of them as one-hundred and fifteen different people but just an empty statistic. We forget that some of those men had families, some even children, and all had their own thoughts and feelings as well as opinions and viewpoints on certain things. A simple statement attempting to collectively include them all can effectively make them less humane and less reminiscent of people.Marianne doesn't stop there. She continues on to say that even photography, albeit interesting, is a bit dehumanizing in its own right. It freezes a moment of time on a simple piece of paper, but the simple caption usually provided at the bottom doesn't do enough justice to the man's personality. In addition, who knows what he was thinking at that moment? He could've been thinking about his life, the world, politics, basketball, etc at that one very moment in time. We'll never know and that heightens the mystery and enigma provided by a photograph.Pierrot Le Fou possesses some of the most incredible observations about the world in any Godard film I have yet to see. Its first hour provides for rousing comedy and drama, revolving around two charismatic and violent criminals that drop everything in their boring life one day and take up a life of crime and unpredictability. Throughout the film's course, it's evident that these characters are (a) completely careless of their actions against the world, (b) could never be with anyone else and are pretty much each others only vice, and (c) have seen way too many films, mostly ones from mainstream Hollywood.Godard uses both Ferdinand and Marianne as people with personalities probably not far off from his own ideas, portraying two characters disgusted by the pop art, commercialist culture America has greatly emphasized. After Ferdinand attends a party where people talk empty philosophy and speak in what sounds like infomercial dialog - beautifully articulating shallowness and the effective of commercialism - he visits his babysitter and ex-girlfriend Marianne, whom he eventually runs away with, abandoning his wife and children in search of a purer life off the land.Ferdinand and Marianne carjack, harass innocent people, and do hugely contemptible things. Their actions remind a seasoned Godard viewer of his first feature film Breathless, which involved two vigilantes, in addition to the previously-mentioned Weekend. Godard clearly has a fascination with the rebel culture, usually following the creative escapades of two dapper cinephiles who, like the film they're currently in, love to defy convention. This is totally fine by me, speaking as someone who has loved each film Godard has made that focused on rebels.All the usually Godardian elements are on display here, from the crisp cinematography of Raoul Coutard that beautifully emphasizes color, the often intrusive but simultaneously fascinating words that pop on screen with no forewarning, the soft and poetic narrations that don't always make a lot of sense, and title cards offering quotes or disjointed fragments of what are either poems or simple musings on life. These elements really get kicked into high-gear during the last fifty minutes of the film. By then, the film begins to have more fun with itself and its premise, rather than assuming a more straight-forward sense of plotting, which is carried throughout the entire first-half.The final observation I can make about Pierrot Le Fou is its dialog, which, for a Godard film, is more prevalent here than any other type of narrative device like narration, literary, etc. Despite lots of talking, little sense or impact is made on these characters. They hear what they want to hear. As Ferdinand states, Marianne speaks entirely in emotion while he speaks entirely in directionless little musings. One wonders how these people could stay together for so long, but as we come to realize, they can't be loved by anyone else but themselves.Pierrot Le Fou strings along numerous, brightly-colored visuals of blood, oceans, and the countryside of France with many scenes of our two leads talking in a subversive manner that really shouldn't work as well as it does. With Godard behind in the camera, and when a pen in his hand, anything goes, but here, he has concocted a masterpiece in observations and societal criticism that doesn't feel burden by too many half-baked ideas.Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.

A quarter of the way through this film it becomes clear that only about half of what is being said has been translated into captions. Half way through it's apparent that it doesn't matter a whit. Three quarters in you realize that your just watching because Belmondo & Karina are so dang cute and the French language is so very, very musical. If you make it to the end you've learned an important lesson about yourself. Don't ask me what that is, that's your problem.Repeat to make the 10 line quota:A quarter of the way through this film it becomes clear that only about half of what is being said has been translated into captions. Half way through it's apparent that it doesn't matter a whit. Three quarters in you realize that your just watching because Belmondo & Karina are so dang cute and the French language is so very, very musical. If you make it to the end you've learned an important lesson about yourself. Don't ask me what that is, that's your problem.

From director Jean-Luc Godard (À Bout De Soufflé (Breathless), Alphaville), I knew this film was featured in the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, but I didn't read anything about the plot or story, so I watched with high curiosity. Basically Ferdinand Griffon (BAFTA nominated Jean-Paul Belmondo) is in an unhappy marriage with his Italian wife (Graziella Galvani) and has recently lost his job at a television broadcasting company having been fired, and feeling a need to escape, after attending a mindless party full of boring conversation he decides to run away with his babysitter and ex-girlfriend Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), leaving his wife and kids and his middle class lifestyle. They go together to her apartment, and he realises she is wanted by gangsters after finding a corpse in her place, they barely escape two of the thugs, and after getting away they decide to keep travelling on a crime spree while heading from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea, in the car that belonged to the dead man. Ferdinand is given the unwelcome nickname 'Pierrot', and together he and Marianne lead an unorthodox life, always on the run, and having burnt the dead man's car (full of money) and sinking a second car in the Mediterranean Sea, they settle down in the French Riviera, but their relationship becomes strained. While Pierrot finds comfort in writing in his diary, philosophising about things and reading his books, Marrianne is getting bored of the living situation reminiscent of something from Robert Louis Stevenson and wants to return to town for more adventure, but entering a night club they only end up meeting one of the men chasing them. After a confrontation with the gangsters the duo is separated in the confusion, Marianne travels around trying to find him, and Ferdinand goes to Toulon and finds a place to settle, but they eventually reunite, and she convinces him to help her get a suitcase full of money, and then she runs away with her real boyfriend Fred (Dirk Sanders), she claimed he was her brother. In anger Pierrot shoots Marriane and Fred, and in the climax he paints his face and decides to get a bunch of red and yellow dynamite sticks and tie them to himself to blow himself up, lighting the fuse he at the last second changes his mind, but he is too late to extinguish the fuse and he is blown up. Also starring Roger Dutoit as Gangster, Hans Meyer as Gangster, Jimmy Karoubi as Dwarf, Krista Nell as Madame Staquet and film director Samuel Fuller as Himself. Belmondo gives the same kind of intriguing performance as he did in Breathless, and Karina is likable as his travelling companion, they make an amusing couple even when there is not really a romantic element. The film looks really good with its use of colour and locations, the changes from genre to genre is interesting, and there are some engaging moments with the crime stuff going on, director Godard called it "an attempt at cinema", it is certainly that, a most watchable drama. Very good!